What type of variation is height

Discontinuous variation does not show a normal distribution. It does not produce a curve and can be represented using only a bar graph. An average or mean cannot be seen in discontinuous variation, unlike in continuous variation. These variations are produced by changes in genome or genes.

Hence, they disturb the genetic system. However, these variations occur occasionally in populations. Some examples of discontinuous variation include tongue rolling, finger prints, eye colour, blood groups, etc. Variations are the different characteristics that exist in organisms of a natural population or species. Variations can be of two different forms: continuous variation and discontinuous variation.

The two forms of variation contain many differences. Discontinuous variation is a cooperating factor in the process of evolution. The main difference between continuous and discontinuous variation is that continuous variation has no limit on the value that can occur within a population while discontinuous variation has distinct groups for organisms to belong to. You can download PDF version of this article and use it for offline purposes as per citation note.

BBC, n. Available here. Cheung, V. National Library of Medicine, Dec. Samanthi Udayangani holds a B. Examples of such characteristics are:. Height ranges from that of the shortest person in the world to that of the tallest person.

Any height is possible between these two extremes. So it is continuous variation. Figure 1: Variation of Intelligence.

Furthermore, phenotypic variation in continuous variation occurs either under the influence of environmental factors or due to a genetic basis.

Generally, many genes are involved in the determination of a particular phenotype in continuous variation. Therefore, this type of trait is also known as a quantitative trait. Discontinuous variation is the second type of genetic variation, showing two or more distinct phenotypes for a particular character in a population. Generally, it is the most simple type of genetic variation to analyze. Basically, one gene determining a particular character usually has two alleles whose dominant forms exhibit one phenotype while the recessive form exhibits the second phenotype.

Therefore, there is a predictable relationship between the genotype and phenotype of discontinuous variation. However, in some cases, a single gene with more than two types of alleles produce polymorphism.

Figure 2: Blood Group Variation. So it is continuous variation. For any species a characteristic that changes gradually over a range of values shows continuous variation. Examples of such characteristics are:. If you record the heights of a group of people and draw a graph of your results, it usually looks something like this:. The more people you measure, and the smaller the categories you use, the closer the results will be to the curved line.