Question

In horses, the genes for white coat color and red coat color are codominant. heterozygotes have a light red coloration, called roan. if you located a population of wild mustangs in a valley that had 476 red horses, 323 roan horses, and 51 white horses, could you say the population is in hardy weinberg equilibrium? first calculate p and q, then use the hardy-weinberg formula to calculate expected genotypic frequencies.

Answer 1

P is allele for red

Q is allele for white

PP is homozygous genotype for red and its frequency is p 2

QQ is homozygous genotype for white and its frequency is q2

PQ is hetrozygous genotype for roan with the frequency 2pq.

If the poppulation is in HW equlibrium than p2+2pq+q2=p+q=1

p= 476/467+323+51=0.56 p2=0.3136

q=51/467+323+51=0.06 q2=0.0036

pq=323/467+323+51=0.38 2pq=0.0672

0.56+0.06+0.38=1

The population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.