Hardy-Weinberg Practice Problems
1. Albinism is a recessive trait. With the Hopi Indian population 1 in 1,000 individuals are affected.
a. What percentage of individuals is affected?
b. What is the frequency of the albino allele?
c. What is the frequency of normal allele?
d. What is the frequency of the carriers for albinism?
e. What are the assumptions made to the above questions? (5 of them)
2. When we use Hardy-Weinberg to work with X-linked traits we use the frequency of affected males.
What variable in the H-W equation would represent affected males and why?
3. In a population of 4,000, 2 males have Type A Hemophilia (X-Linked Recessive). Assume the
population is 50% male and 50% female.
a. How many of the females are carriers?
4. In water lilies there exist scalloped shaped leaves, arrowhead leaves and round leaves.
Round
RR
Arrowhead
Rr
Scalloped
rr
The frequency of the round (R) allele is 0.7
a. Assuming the lilies are a completely isolated population and follow Hardy-Weinberg rules. How
many plants of each shape would you expect to find if the population consists of 50 water lilies?
b. What are some reasons that this population might not really follow Hardy-Weinberg’s rules? (Be
specific)
E.C. What do you know about plants that may really throw your results to question 4? (Reproduction)