thanks for stopping by today we're going to talk about genotypes versus phenotypes so when you have a trait that is a pair of alleles such as Big B little B or little B little B we can refer to them in two different ways the first is the genotype which refers to the exact pairing of the alleles for example if we're doing with eye color and there are two alleles a Big B for blue eyes and a little B for green eyes then there are three possible genotypes Big B Big B Big B little B or little B little B right so these are the genotypes these are the possible pairing of the alleles the genotype isn't concerned with the expression of the trait only the pairing of the alleles okay the other way to refer to a trait is by the phenotype which is its expression so using our previous example of eye color there are only two phenotypes blue eyes are green eyes all right the phenotype isn't concerned with the pairing of the alleles at the genotypes Big B Big B and Big B little B both give the same phenotype blue eyes okay so the phenotype is just the expression all right so to recap the genotype refers to the pair of alleles for a trait in this case the specific letters and the phenotype refers to the expression of that trait right how it looks or how it functions the expression okay and that's it so I know it can be confusing concept so hopefully that helps and if you have any additional questions please throw them in the comments I'll see what I can do to help you out check out some of my other videos on this and other topics and subscribe to keep up with my new videos I'll catch you next time