Artificial selection begins when a breeder selects what to him are the “best” animals to be parents and deselects those that aren’t. The expectation is that what makes animals “best” will be passed to their progeny, while what isn’t “best” is removed… more »
Archives for: "January 2019"
The selection process forms the group of animals that are to be parents. The mating process then matches males to females from within that group. These two steps are repeated over and over, and ideally each generation will improve on the previous one… more »
And that concludes the “Background Information” section of this blog! I avoided discussing concepts like “genes” and “genotype” in much detail, as I wanted to focus more on the foundations behind breeding. It’s worth stressing that the mechanisms of… more »
People have always understood that characteristics of parents can be passed to offspring. But how this was actually done was a mystery. One theory — the now defunct Blending Inheritance theory — held that progeny inherited an average, or blending, of… more »