Mastering Biology Ch. 15 & 16: 1A

Question 1A:
At the time of Mendel’s pea plant experiments, no one knew how organisms formed gametes. As Mendel studied the inheritance of two different characters, he wondered how the alleles for the two characters segregated into gametes. Mendel had two hypotheses for how this might work.
Under the hypothesis of dependent assortment, the alleles inherited from the parental generation should always be transmitted to the next generation in the same combinations.
Under the hypothesis of independent assortment, alleles for different characters should segregate independently of each other, meaning that alleles should be packaged into gametes in all possible combinations, as long as each gamete has one allele for each gene.
The figure below shows the experiment that Mendel used to distinguish between these two hypotheses. The results of the experiment confirmed that the alleles for these characters undergo independent assortment.