Question

List in tabular from two distinguishing features between acquired traits and inherited traits, with one example of each.

Answer 1

Trait is the distinguishing characteristics and quality that is found in organisms. For example, the hair colour, eye colour, type of beaks in birds, body shape, muscle definition, etc. this trait is either inherited or may be acquired.

Complete Answer:
- To solve this question, we should know about inheritance of traits. Inheritance is defined as the phenomenon in which the child gets the genetic information from the parents. The heredity depends on the inheritance and it is the reason that the offspring are similar to the parents. This means the members of the people of the same family possess the same characteristics.
- The concept of inheritance was given by the scientist Gregor Mendel and this law is known as Mendel’s laws of inheritance. To make this understanding, Mendel chooses the different characteristics of the peas and undergo cross-pollination on the pea lines that results in stable trait inheritance and undergo continuous self pollination and are termed as true breeding pea lines.
- But in some cases the gene does not get expressed and the gene which gets expressed is termed as dominant and the gene which does not get expressed is recessive.
- For example; when a tall plant was crossed with a short plant, the F1 generation plants were all tall but in the F2 generation, the plants were not all tall, that is both tall and short plants. This shows that the F1 plants had inherited their trait from the short plants but did not express it in the presence of the tallness that is dominant character and had transferred it to the next generation.

The difference between the acquired traits and inherited trait are:

Sl.No	Acquired trait	Inherited trait
1.	The trait of organisms that is not inherited rather develops as a result of the environment is termed as acquired trait.	The trait that gets inherited from the parents to the offspring because of the transfer of genes is termed as inherited trait.
2.	The acquired traits do not pass through from one generation to another.	Inherited traits can transfer from one generation to the next generation and also causes variation.
3.	For example; low weight of beetles	For example; red colour of beetles.

Note: The principle of dominance states that, when two genes are found in an organism one of them masks the presence of another one, in other words one gene is dominant and stops the expression of the other gene.