Question

In dolphins, to have spots on the skin is a recessive trait. One spotted dolphin and one solid gray dolphin have a baby spotted dolphin. Go through the following steps to figure out the genotype of the parent dolphins.
1) what is the genotype of the spotted (recessive) parent?

Answer 1

Answer:

the spotted parent has the genotype ss

Explanation:

we will use s as the letter when describing the spotted trait.

since spotted is recessive, that parents have to have two little s to have the trait. Since the child also has that, we know that they will have the genotype ss.  the child would have to get a little s from both parents, so the solid parent would have Ss, showing as solid, but still having the gene for spots.