Design a Species Project-7.2

I've had several of my 7th graders (7.2) asking about the project you are putting together. The part that you seem to be stuck on is the designing part. Instead of starting with an elaborate idea about what your creature could look like and all the cool things it can do, start with deciding on some traits it could have.

For example:

• Hair/ Body color-red or blue; green or orange; 
• Make it a codominant trait and do green, orange, or green with orange stripe

• Height: tall or short
• Eyes: 1 or 3
• Wings or no wings
• Horns/no horns
• Hair: straight, curly, bald, spiky
• Teeth: sharp teeth, flat teeth, both, no teeth
• Body shape: round, oval, square, heart shaped
• Dragons: fire breathing/ice breathing

After you have decided on 5 traits, start deciding which ones you want to use for the different requirements. For the single-allele traits, pick something easy. These are the traits that are dominant or recessive-no in between; tall/ short, wings/no wings, horns/ no horns. Next, you need a codominant or incompletely dominant trait. Choose one that you can easily make an in-between or mixed trait; red/blue/purple, green/orange/striped, sharp teeth/flat teeth/both.

Your sex-linked that can be easy too. You can make this a dominant/recessive trait. For example; maybe 1 eye is dominant and 3 eyes is recessive, but this time it is linked to the X chromosome, so you have to include the genotype for females (XX) and males (XY). Remember, this does not mean all females have a trait and all males don't (or have a different one).

The multiple allele trait will probably be the hardest for you. But again, just look at what you want to do with your creature and make it happen. Maybe you want to do hair. The alleles are S (straight), C (curly) or B (bald); S and C are codominant and B is recessive. So, if they are SS or SB you get straight hair; CC or CB is curly hair; SC is straight AND curly; CC is bald.

NOW, you can draw out the traits and the genotypes that would give you that phenotype. Then, draw two examples of your organisms (name them!) and give them different traits. Yes, one should be a female (XX) and one a male (XY), but you don't have to give them some trait that shows that; I can figure it out from the genotype.

From there, the other parts will be easy. Just break it down to a step-by-step process, but start at the beginning.