Respuesta :
Answer: If 25 percent of a breeder's guinea pigs have long hair (p²), the frequency of the recessive allele (q) is 50%.
Explanation: Since long hair is dominant over short hair, let's denote long hair as HH and short hair as hh. Note that the question didn't indicate that the 25% of the guinea pigs with long hair are heterozygous for the trait. Therefore, we assume that they are homozygous (HH) long hair.
According to Hardy-Weinberg, for two alleles p and q, p + q = 1 where p represents the dominant allele and q represents the recessive allele.
From the question, p² = 25% = 25/100 = 0.25
p = √0.25 = 0.5
Since p + q = 1,
q = 1 - p = 1 - 0.5 = 0.5
Converting 0.5 to percentage, we get 0.5 x 100 = 50%.
Therefore, the frequency of recessive allele (q) is 50%.
