In: Biology
Discuss the interaction of heredity and the environment in producing individual traits and provide a specific example.
All traits depend both on hereditary and environmental factors. Both heredity and environment interact to show their effects. For example, there is a variation in height of humans. Although height is highly heredity, environmental also has a large impact. For example, Japanese-Americans are on the average taller and heavier than their second cousins who grew up in Japan. This displays the effect of environmental, especially dietary differences.
All traits depend on the environment in which they are expressed, even traits that are very strongly affected by heredity. Conversely, all traits depend on the genotype on which they act, even traits that are very strongly affected by environmental differences.
Both hereditary and environmental factors can influence a person's personality. Heredity sets the limitation which environmental differences decide the concluding result. However, hereditary factors have a larger effect on personality traits.