Greg decides to enhance his reptile-breeding income by branching out into bearded dragons. He crosses two dragons that are heterozygous for a red stripe trait. The offspring display a 3:1 ratio of normal to red-striped phenotypes, but the red-striped dragons are much, much larger than their unstriped siblings.
What type of genetic pattern is demonstrated here?
The genetic pattern demonstrated here is pleiotropy. Pleiotropy occurs when a gene or allele controls more than a single trait, the gene for red-stripe also controls the size of the reptiles.