1. The author discusses snakes in the opening paragraph to show how snakes can come in different colours and patterns. The author explains how there are different genetic varieties within the same species. Because of the fact there are many different snake varieties, I think that the author uses snakes as an example to explain morphs and the crossing over of them to produce a variety of different types of snakes.
2. Inheritance patterns are the predictable patterns seen in the transmission of traits from one generation to the next.
Inheritance traits are also known as hereditary traits; which is the passing of traits to offspring.
3. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Austrian monk that did experiments to explain basic inheritance patterns. Gregor Mendel’s hypothesis was that parents pass down separate and distinct factors to their offspring. Factors today are known as genes.
4. A true-breeding plant is plant that produces offspring identical in appearance to itself generation after generation, when self-fertilized.
Cross-fertilization is fertilization that occurs when sperm from the pollen of one plant fertilize the eggs in the flower of a different plant.
Hybrids are an offspring that results from crossing two true-breeding variaties of the same species.
Monohybrids are an offspring of parents that differs in just one trait.
Mendel first identified pea plants as true-breeding plants in the P generation phase. He then conducted a bunch of cross-fertilization experiments, which produced hybrids of tall-stemmed pea plants with short-stemmed pea plants into monohybrids in the F1 generation. However Mendel observed that the F1 hybrids were tall not short and wondered whether the short plant’s genetic contribution was lost because of crossing. Mendel tested his idea by letting the F1 plants to self fertilize instead of crossing and found that about ¼ of the F2 generation plants were short. He came to a
