Sixty flowering plants are planted in a flowerbed. forty of the plants are red-flowering homozygous dominant. twenty of the plants are white-flowering homozygous recessive. the plants naturally pollinate and reseed themselves for several years. in a subsequent year, 178 red-flowered plants, 190 pink-flowered plants, and 52 white-flowered plants are found in the flowerbed. use a chi-square analysis to determine if the population is in hardy-weinberg equilibrium

Question

Winston Lowery

Biology

21 January, 08:30

Sixty flowering plants are planted in a flowerbed. forty of the plants are red-flowering homozygous dominant. twenty of the plants are white-flowering homozygous recessive. the plants naturally pollinate and reseed themselves for several years. in a subsequent year, 178 red-flowered plants, 190 pink-flowered plants, and 52 white-flowered plants are found in the flowerbed. use a chi-square analysis to determine if the population is in hardy-weinberg equilibrium

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Hillary Brock · Answer 1

The flowering population is in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium.

Step by Step Explanation:

Total initial population size = 60

As both the populations are homozygous so the frequency of alleles will be,

P = 80/120 = 0.66

q = 40/120 = 0.33

The predicted frequencies for genotypes once the population has reached Hardy-Weinberg

p2 = 0.4356

2pq = 0.4356

q2 = 0.1089

The number of plants with each type of flower in a papulation of 420 is,

Homozygous dominant = 185

heterozygous = 185

Homozygous recessive = 50

Chi square analysis:

The observed values for red-flowered plants, pink-flowered plants, and white-flowered plants are not significantly different from the expected values predicted by Hardy Weinberg equilibrium.

Phenotype observed (o) expected (e) (o-e) 2/e

Red 178 185 0.26

Pink 190 185 0.135

White 52 50 0.08

chi-square = 0.474

With 2 degree of freedom this chi-square gives a p value of 0.7 - 0.8, which is not significant.