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Grant finds out that dilute homing pigeons sell for even more than slate pigeons

ID: 89111 • Letter: G

Question

Grant finds out that dilute homing pigeons sell for even more than slate pigeons. Dilute pigeons are “true” silver. Dilute is a sex-linked recessive trait (z-linked, represented by q). Grant decides to mate his smartest bird, Keith who is not silver (or a carrier), with his silver bird, Meredith.


Note that any letter can be chosen to represent the trait. Often you use a letter that can be associated with the trait, however, you may also want to use a letter in which the lowercase and capital letters look very different [ie Q/q vs S/s] so as to help avoid confusion.

What is Meredith's genotype?  

ZW

ZqW

ZQZQ

ZqZq

a.

ZW

b.

ZqW

c.

ZQZQ

d.

ZqZq

Male Z Z Sperm Possible Offspring Eggs Female

Explanation / Answer

The answer is b. Meredith's genotype should be ZqW as it is already known that dilute is a sex-linked recessive trait and meredith is silver in color which means that it has only one Z gene with recessive trait that gives her silver color. keith is neither silver nor a carrier which indicates that it has homozygous dominant alleles.