Name: ______________________________________ Date: ________________________

Student Exploration: Inheritance

Vocabulary: acquired trait, asexual reproduction, clone, codominant traits, dominant trait,
inherit, offspring, recessive trait, sexual reproduction, trait

Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.)

1. Johnny and Isabelle are a young couple expecting their first child. Both have blue eyes,
tattoos, and green hair. Which features do you think their child is most likely to have?
□ Blue eyes
□ Tattoos
□ Green hair

2. Features like eye color, skin tone, height, and hair color are called traits. What traits do you
think children inherit, or receive, from their parents?

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Gizmo Warm-up
In the Inheritance Gizmo you can create and breed aliens on an
imaginary planet. Select Asexual reproduction. During asexual
reproduction, a single parent produces offspring (children).

1. Click Create alien and create your own alien. Describe its traits
in the Parent row of the table:

Alien Body type Skin Color Antenna shape Tattoo

2. Drag the parent over to the Parent 1 space and press Reproduce. Fill in the Offspring
traits on the table above. What traits appear to be inherited from the parent?

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Because this offspring inherits its traits from one parent, it is called a clone.

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 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity A:
 Select Sexual reproduction.
Inherited traits
 Drop all remaining aliens (if any) in the Exit hole.

Question: Are all parental traits inherited by offspring?

1. Observe: In sexual reproduction, two parents pass traits to the offspring. Create and breed
a variety of aliens. Record your observations on a separate sheet of paper.

2. Form a hypothesis: Which traits do you think are passed down from alien parents to their

offspring, and which traits are not? Explain. ______________________________________

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3. Experiment: Set the Food supply to 2 bushes. Create two identical parents with thick
bodies, green skin, curly antennas, and triangle tattoos. Make two offspring and record their
traits in the table below.

Offspring Body type Skin Color Antenna shape Tattoo

4. Analyze: Compare the offspring traits to the parent traits.

A. Which traits were passed from parents to offspring? __________________________

B. Which traits were not passed down? ______________________________________

Traits that are not passed down (not inherited) are called acquired traits.

5. Investigate further: Create offspring with a few different levels of Food supply. How does
food supply affect the body type of offspring?

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6. Think and discuss: Suppose a human child had a mother with dyed-pink hair and a father
who was missing a finger (lost in an accident). Would the child inherit these traits? Explain.

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 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity B:
 Clear all parents and offspring from the Gizmo by
Skin color dropping them into the Exit hole.
 Create a green alien and a pink alien.

Question: How is alien skin color inherited?

1. Predict: What do you think the offspring of a green alien and pink alien will look like? ______

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2. Experiment: Test your prediction with the Gizmo. What did you find? __________________

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When offspring show a mixture of parent traits, the traits are called codominant traits.

3. Predict: What do you think will happen when you breed two green-and-pink spotted aliens?

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4. Experiment: Follow the steps below. (You may have already done the first step or two.)
 Place a green alien and a pink alien in the locations for Parent 1 and Parent 2.
 Breed these parents twice. Drag both offspring to the spaces below the Nest.
 Drag the two green-and-pink offspring up to become the new Parent 1 and Parent 2.
 Breed these aliens 10 times. Record how many times each skin color occurred in
their offspring. (For example, if there were 2 green offspring, write “2” below “green.”)

Skin color Green Green and pink Pink

5. Analyze: Look at the results of your experiment.

A. What kind of skin did most of the offspring have? ____________________________

B. Did all of the offspring have green and pink skin? ____________________________

6. Think and discuss: For a codominant trait, do the offspring of identical parents always look
like the parents? Explain your answer.

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2019
 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity C:
 Clear all aliens by dropping them into the Exit hole.
Antenna shape  Create two aliens – one with straight antenna and
one with curly antenna.

Question: How is alien antenna shape inherited?

1. Predict: What do you think will happen when you breed an alien with straight antenna to an

alien with curly antenna? _____________________________________________________

2. Experiment: Test your prediction using the Gizmo. Create at least 5 offspring. What did you

notice? ___________________________________________________________________

3. Analyze: Sometimes when two traits are combined, one is a dominant trait and the other is
a recessive trait. If both traits are present, only the dominant trait is seen in the offspring.

A. Which trait is dominant, straight antenna or curly? ___________________________

B. Which trait is recessive? ___________________________

4. Investigate further: Take two of the straight-antenna offspring and breed them together to
produce 10 new offspring. Record the antenna type of each offspring.

A. What happened? _____________________________________________________

B. Did the recessive trait disappear? ________________________________________

C. How can a trait skip a generation? _______________________________________

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5. Draw conclusions: For a dominant/recessive trait, do the offspring of identical parents

always look like the parents? Explain. ___________________________________________

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6. Compare: How do the offspring of two parents that reproduce sexually differ from the
offspring of a single parent that reproduces asexually?

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2019