Which type of inheritance pattern results in offspring with a phenotype that is an intermediate of the parent phenotypes?

The correct answer is characterized by a situation where neither allele in a gene pair completely dominates the other, leading to an offspring phenotype that is a blend of the parental traits. This pattern is known as incomplete dominance.

In this inheritance pattern, when two different alleles are present, the heterozygous phenotype manifests as an intermediate expression between the two homozygous phenotypes. For instance, if one parent has pure red flowers (dominant trait) and the other has pure white flowers (recessive trait), the offspring produced may exhibit pink flowers, which represents a mix of both parental colors rather than exhibiting dominance of one color over the other.

Understanding this lends insight into how phenotypic expression can vary beyond simple dominant and recessive traits, illustrating the complexity of genetic inheritance. In contrast, complete dominance would display one parent's phenotype completely overshadowing the other, codominance would show both parental phenotypes distinctly present rather than blended, and epistasis involves interactions between genes that can alter the expected phenotypic ratios in a way unrelated to simple blending of traits.