Name: Jason Bao Date: 3/5/21

Student Exploration: Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

Vocabulary: allele, genotype, Hardy-Weinberg equation, Hardy-Weinberg principle, heterozygous,

homozygous, incompletely dominant, Punnett square

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

1. A bird’s feather color is controlled by two alleles, D (dark feathers)

and d (lighter feathers). Suppose two Dd birds mate. What
DD Dd
percentages of DD, Dd, and dd offspring would you predict? Use
the Punnett square at right to help determine your answer. Dd dd

DD – 25% Dd – 50% dd – 25%

2. In this situation, what ratio of heterozygous (Dd) to homozygous (DD and dd) offspring would you

expect to find? 1:1

Gizmo Warm-up
Many factors—immigration, natural selection, hunting, etc—can
influence the composition of a population. To determine if one of these
factors is affecting a population, it is useful to know what a population
looks like when none of these factors is present.

In 1908, Godfrey Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg independently discovered the laws that govern such
populations. These laws can be explored in the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium Gizmo.

1. The parrots you see represent a population of 500 parrots. For these parrots, the D allele is
incompletely dominant over d, which means that Dd parrots are intermediate between DD and dd
parrots. In the Gizmo, select the TABLE tab. How many parrots of each genotype are in the initial
population?

DD – 250 Dd – 100 dd – 150

2. Return to the DESCRIPTION tab. Click Begin, and then click Breed. What happens?

The birds start flying around, breed, and lay eggs.

3. Click Hatch, and look on the TABLE tab. What are the parrot populations now?

DD – 183 Dd – 226 dd – 91

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 Activity A: Get the Gizmo ready:
Alleles and  On the DESCRIPTION tab, click Reset.
genotypes  Check that DD is 50% and dd is 30%.

Question: How will the proportion of genotypes and alleles change over time when mating is
random and no natural selection is occurring?

1. Predict: How do you expect the proportions of D and d alleles to change over time?

Over time, the proportions of D and d alleles will stay constant over time because mating is random
and no natural selection is occurring.

2. Gather data: Run a generation in the Gizmo. After clicking Hatch, fill in the allele and genotype
percentages for generation 1. Repeat this process for 5 generations.

Initial Generation
values 1 2 3 4 5
% D alleles 60 60.1 61.6 61.9 61.6 59.5
% d alleles 40 39.9 38.4 38.1 38.4 40.5
% of DD genotype 50 35.8 39.2 36.8 35.2 33.4
% of Dd genotype 20 48.6 44.8 50.2 52.8 52.2
% of dd genotype 30 15.6 16.0 13.0 12.0 14.4

3. Analyze: What patterns do you see in your data?

Overall, the % of D and d alleles stayed relatively constant over the five generations as predicted
initially. However, while the percentage of the heterogeneous genotype steadily increased over the
generations, both homogeneous genotypes decreased from their initial values.

4. Interpret: Select the ALLELE GRAPH tab. What does this graph show?

This graph shows that the percentage of D and d alleles stayed relatively constant over the five
generations and hovered around 60% and 40%, respectively.

5. Interpret: Select the GENOTYPE GRAPH tab. What does this graph show?

This graph shows the rapid increase of the heterozygous genotypes immediately with generation 1 and
the slow fluctuation afterwards with time and the rapid fall of both homozygous genotypes in generation
1, followed by a similar constant fluctuation over multiple generations.

(Activity A continued on next page)

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Activity A (continued from previous page)

6. Gather data: On the DESCRIPTION tab, click Reset. Set DD and dd to any values you like. Fill in
the initial values in the table below, and then run the Gizmo for five generations. Record the allele
and genotype percentages for each generation in the table below.

Initial Generation
values 1 2 3 4 5
% D alleles 74.0 74.0 73.1 75.0 75.4 75.3
% d alleles 26.0 26.0 26.9 25.9 24.6 24.7
% of DD genotype 74.0 55.6 54.0 55.8 55.2 57.0
% of Dd genotype 0.0 36.8 38.2 38.4 40.4 36.6
% of dd genotype 26.0 7.6 7.8 5.8 4.4 6.4

7. Analyze: Do the patterns you noticed in the first experiment appear in the second? Explain.

Yes, the same patterns in the first experiment also appear in the second as the % of individual alleles
continues to stay relatively constant while the percentage of the heterogeneous genotype steadily
increased over the generations and both homogeneous genotypes decreased from their initial values.

8. Draw conclusions: The Hardy-Weinberg principle states that the proportions of alleles and
genotypes in a population will remain stable as long as the following criteria are satisfied:
 Mating is random.
 There is no immigration or emigration.
 No natural or artificial selection is occurring.
 There is no mutation.
 The population is relatively large.

How well does the Hardy-Weinberg principle describe this population of parrots?

The Hardy-Weinberg principle perfectly covers this entire population as there is a population size of
500 parrots, random mating as stated in the problem, no immigration or emigration as this
population is isolated, and no natural selection occurring as stated in the problem. However, it is not
known whether or not there are mutations but all of the offspring in the five generations had one of
the three genotypes so it can be assumed that there are no mutations.

9. Think and discuss: Would you say that this parrot population is evolving? Explain.

This parrot population is not evolving because the frequency of alleles in the population remained
constant from generation to generation as only Mendelian segregation and recombination of alleles is at
work and thus, this population is in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. Additionally, evolution would involve
a mutation or introduction of a new gene that causes a different allele to come into play which did not
occur in this case.

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 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity B:
 Click Reset.
Genotype ratios
 Set DD to 30% and dd to 70%.

Question: How do genotype percentages relate to allele percentages?

1. Calculate: You can use the laws of probability to predict how many DD, Dd, and dd offspring will
result from this parent population.

A. What is the current percentage of D alleles in the population? 30%

B. What is the current percentage of d alleles in the population? 70%

C. What is the probability of inheriting a D allele from a parent? (Hint: Convert the percentage

of D alleles to a decimal.) 0.3 Call this value p.

D. What is the probability of inheriting a d allele? 0.7 Call this value q.

2. Explain: If a trait is determined by two alleles, the sum of p and q is 1. Why is this true?

This is true because there are only two possibilities of alleles, p and q,
so together they represent all the alleles for that trait in the population.
As such, the sum of their frequencies must be 1.

3. Calculate: Fill in the current p and q values next to the D and d alleles
around the Punnett square at right. Then calculate the probability of 0.3*0.3 = 0.3*0.7 =
each offspring genotype. Write these values into the individual 0.09 0.21
squares.
0.7*0.3 = 0.7*0.7 =
For example, the upper left box in the square represents the 0.21 0.49
probability of a DD offspring. The probability of inheriting a D allele
from each parent is p, so the probability of DD is p 2.

What is the sum of the probabilities in the four squares? 1

4. Manipulate: Now determine an algebraic expression for the probability of each genotype in terms of
p (the probability of inheriting D) and q (the probability of inheriting d). Use the Punnett square
above as a guide.

A. In terms of p and q, what is the probability of a DD offspring? P2

B. In terms of p and q, what is the probability of a dd offspring? Q2

C. In terms of p and q, what is the probability of a Dd offspring? 2pq

(Activity B continued on next page)

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Activity B (continued from previous page)

5. Calculate: The Hardy-Weinberg equation states that the sum of the probabilities of each genotype is
equal to 1:
probability of DD + probability of Dd + probability of dd = 1

p 2 + 2pq + q 2 = 1

Why is the probability of Dd equal to 2pq? It is equal to 2pq to account for both possibilities of
creating a heterozygote and to ensure the equation equals a total of 1.

6. Predict: Check that DD is still set to 30% and dd is still set to 70%. With p = 0.3 and q = 0.7, what are
the predicted percentages of DD, Dd, and dd offspring?

Predicted percentages: DD – 9 Dd – 42 dd – 49

7. Test: Click Begin, Breed, and Hatch. What are the resulting genotype percentages?

Actual percentages: DD – 8.4 Dd – 43.2 dd – 48.4

How close are these to the predicted values? Very close to the predicted values

8. Apply: For a dominant/recessive gene, it is often difficult to determine the percentages of

dominant and recessive alleles in a population because individuals that express the dominant trait may
be either homozygous (DD) or heterozygous (Dd). The only thing that is known for certain is the
percentage of individuals that are homozygous recessive (dd).

A. Suppose that 16% of a population is homozygous recessive (dd). According to the Hardy-

Weinberg equation, what is the value of q 2? 0.16

B. If you know q 2, you can calculate q. What is the value of q? 0.4

C. Recall that p + q is equal to 1. What is the value of p? 0.6

D. Based on the values of p and q, calculate the percentages of the DD and Dd genotypes:

DD – 0.36 Dd – 0.48

9. Check: If a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, genotype percentages will remain

stable over time. Set DD to the value given in part D above and dd to 16%. Run several generations in
the Gizmo. Do the genotype percentages remain relatively constant? Explain.

After several generations, the genotype percentages do remain relatively constant as seen in the chart
displayed in the gizmo as this population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium so the frequency of alleles
and genotypes in the parrot population will remain constant from generation to generation.

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 Activity C: Get the Gizmo ready:
A useful Hardy-  Click Reset. Set DD to 50% and dd to 50%.
Weinberg ratio  Turn on Show Hardy-Weinberg quantities.

Question: How can you determine if a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

1. Manipulate: The Hardy-Weinberg equation is p 2 + 2pq + q 2 = 1, where p = probability of D, q =

probability of d, p2 = probability of DD, 2pq = probability of Dd, and q2 = probability of dd.

A. Look under Show Hardy-Weinberg quantities. Notice there are two terms: Dd•Dd and
DD•dd. Rewrite each of these in terms of the variables p and q.

Dd•Dd: 4p2q2 DD•dd: p2q2

B. The third line of the table is the ratio (Dd•Dd) / (DD•dd). Rewrite this ratio in terms of p and
q, and then simplify the expression. Show your work.

(Dd•Dd) / (DD•dd) = 4p2q2 / p2q2 = 4

C. If a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, what would you expect to be the ratio of

Dd•Dd / DD•dd? 4:1

Because this ratio is usually close to 4 when a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium,

finding the ratio can be used as a quick test to see if a population is in equilibrium or not. (Note:
In most populations, the ratio will range from about 2 to 8.)

2. Experiment: With Dd set to 0%, the initial value of Dd•Dd / DD•dd is 0. Click Begin, Breed, and
Hatch. Record the percentage of DD, Dd, dd, and Dd•Dd / DD•dd for 5 generations in the table
below.

Initial Generation
values 1 2 3 4 5
% DD genotype 50 25.6 26.2 27.4 27.6 26.0
% Dd genotype 0 48.8 53.4 51.4 47.8 51.2
% dd genotype 50 25.6 20.4 21.2 24.6 22.8
Dd•Dd / DD•dd 0 3.634 5.335 4.548 3.365 4.422

3. Calculate: What is the mean value of Dd•Dd / DD•dd? 4.261

While the value of Dd•Dd / DD•dd may vary a bit, it will tend to stay fairly close to the expected
value of 4 as long as a population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. If the value of Dd•Dd / DD•dd
differs significantly from 4 (for example, below 2 or above 8), it is a sign that the population is not in
equilibrium and selection may be taking place.

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