Inheritance patterns of Dragons:

Dragons are a curious type of creature. Amazingly, though, their genetics is very similar to that of humans. Hagrid, the Gamekeeper at Hogwarts, wishes to develop a herd of dragons for his Care of Magical Creatures class. Unfortunately, he only has two dragons as of now. The purpose of this activity is to determine what kinds of dragons Hagrid will have in his herd when (and if) his two dragons decide to mate.

Directions: Obtain a coin from my desk. Begin by flipping the coin for mom. Heads means mom is giving the dominant trait and tails means she’s giving the recessive trait. Circle the trait you flip for mom and then flip for dad. Fill in the offspring’s genotype. Then use the reference sheet provided to determine the phenotype of the dragon. Once you have completed the table, draw your dragon based on their phenotypes and answer the analysis questions.

Trait

Mom

Dad

Genotype

Phenotype

Fire/No fire (A/a’s)

A a

A a

Toes (M/m’s)

M m

M m

Spikes on tail (Q/q’s)

Q q

Q q

Tail color (T/t’s)

T t

T t

Body color (E/e’s)

E e

E e

Wing color (L/l’s)

L l

L l

Horn/no horn (D/d’s)

(D/d’s)

D d

D d

Analysis/Questions

· Compare your dragon to other dragons around the room. What differences and similarities do you see?

· How do you explain all of the differences, even though the dragons all had the same set of parents?

Your Dragon:

Dragon Key

Phenotype

Genotype

breathes fire

A

does not breathe fire

a

4 toes

M

3 toes

m

5 spikes on tail

Q

4 spikes on tail

q

red tail

T

yellow tail

t

blue body and head

E

green body and head

e

red wings

L

yellow wings

l

horn

D

no horn

d

Chromosome Strips

For Father

(a) (A)

(M) (m)

(q) (Q)

(t) (T)

(E) (e)

(l) (L)

(d) (D)

Chromosome Strips

For Mother

(A)

(a) (d) (L) (e) (t) (Q) (m) (D) (l) (E) (T) (q) (M)