How are traits passed from parents to offspring?

Traits are passed from parents to offspring primarily through the inheritance of alleles. Alleles are different forms of a gene that determine specific characteristics or traits. Each parent contributes one allele for each trait, leading to the offspring having a combination of alleles that dictate their physical and genetic characteristics.

During reproduction, alleles from both parents combine during fertilization. This results in a genetic makeup that influences traits such as eye color, height, and many other characteristics in the offspring. The mixing of alleles helps promote genetic diversity, contributing to the variations seen in a population.

While environmental factors can influence how traits are expressed, they do not determine the genetic inheritance of these traits. Similarly, while genetic material is exchanged between generations, it is the specific inheritance of alleles that directly dictates trait transmission. Natural selection is a process that can affect how traits are favored or ignored over time in a population, but it does not pertain to how individual traits are passed directly from parents to their offspring. Thus, the inheritance of alleles is fundamental to the transmission of traits across generations.