Final answer:
A common real-world example of incomplete dominance is the breeding of red and white snapdragon flowers, which results in pink flowers. This exemplifies how neither trait is completely dominant, leading to a blending of parental traits in their offspring.
Step-by-step explanation:
A real-world example of incomplete dominance in biology is the cross-breeding of red and white snapdragon flowers. When these flowers are cross-pollinated, the offspring commonly display pink flowers, which is a mix of the parental traits. This occurs because neither the red nor the white trait is completely dominant over the other. Each parent contributes an allele for flower color, and the result is an intermediate phenotype, neither red nor white but a blending of the two, which is pink.
In incomplete dominance, the heterozygous phenotype is a blend of the two homozygous phenotypes. Unlike complete dominance where the dominant allele completely masks the effect of the recessive allele, in incomplete dominance, the effects of both alleles are visible in the phenotype of the heterozygotes. This concept is widely taught in genetics to illustrate the complexity of inheritance patterns beyond the simple Mendelian inheritance.