Answer to Question #111638 in Biology for luyuanli

Question

In a certain species of chicken, the trait for color is codominant. If a chicken carries the allele for black and the allele for white, what would their phenotype be?

Answer 1

A dominant allele is an allele that shows the effect even if the individual has only one copy of this allele. If alleles are codominant, both alleles affect the phenotype while the individual has a mix of both traits encoded by both codominant alleles. As a result, if the trait for color is codominant, a chicken that carries the allele for black and the allele for white will show a mix of phenotypes and will be checkered (speckled).