Mendelian Genetics Webquest

Name: ______Date: ______

Mendelian Genetics WebQuest

click on “Mendel’s Peas,”  click on “Enter Web Lab.” Once in the lab, follow the directions for moving through Mendel’s experiments.

Direct link:

1. When and where did Mendel live?

2. What did Mendel study?

3. Why did Mendel study pea plants? ( 2 reasons)

4. How many traits are visible in pea plants?

5. List them in the space below (make sure to include both options for each trait):

6. What were the traits of the pea plants for 2 of the 5 crosses you completed?

Cross 1 / Cross 2
Traits / Parent 1 / Parent 2 / Parent 1 / Parent 2
Pea Shape
Pea Color
Pod Shape
Pod Color
Flower Color
Plant Size
Flower Position

7. For the 2 crosses you identified above, indicate the flower color, plant size and pea

color for each of the 5 offspring produced from each cross in the table below.

Cross 1
Traits / Offspring 1 / Offspring 2 / Offspring 3 / Offspring 4 / Offspring 5
Flower Color
Plant Size
Pea Color
Cross 2
Traits / Offspring 1 / Offspring 2 / Offspring 3 / Offspring 4 / Offspring 5
Flower Color
Plant Size
Pea Color

8. Are there some traits that get hidden from one generation to the next?

9. When you cross one plant with itself, are its offspring always identical to itself?

10. Do purple flowers always produce all purple flowers?

11. Do white flowers always produce all white flowers?

12. After following “Mendel’s” directions for the self-fertilization of the two plants, what

did you learn about the peas?

13. What are dominant traits?

14. What are recessive traits?

15. Which flower color is dominant (circle one)? PURPLE or WHITE

16. Which characteristics are dominant and which are recessive? Fill in the table below by writing in the correct characteristic under each heading.

Traits / Dominant / Recessive
Pea Shape
Pea Color
Pod Shape
Pod Color
Flower Color
Plant Size
Flower Position

Once you have correctly identified all the characteristics that are dominant, chose the “exit” button. Then, go back to the original web lab directory (first link) and click on the “Punnett Squares” Link

1. What are Punnett Squares used for?

2. What do the letters in the boxes tell us about the offspring of the chickens?

3. How often do we expect that brown chickens will be produced as a result of the

cross presented in the lab?

4. Write in the correctly completed Punnett Square for the lemmings.

A / a
A
a

5. How many lemmings will be heterozygous or carriers for the albinism trait, out of

four offspring?

6. What combination of lemmings from the first cross will give you the best possibility

for producing albino lemmings? ______x______(write their genes here).

7. How many tries did it take you to produce the long-tailed, albino lemming?

8. Try it: Make a Punnett Square by crossing a purebred brown-eyed bunny: BB with a purebred blue eyed bunny (bb). What is the probability that the baby bunnies will have:

brown eyes?______

blue eyes? ______