What is one of the conditions for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

One of the conditions for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is random mating. This condition ensures that individuals in a population pair up without regard to their genotypes or phenotypes, which means that allele frequencies remain constant from one generation to the next. Random mating helps maintain genetic variation in the population and prevents changes in allele frequencies that could result from selective mating practices, such as inbreeding or assortative mating.

Under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, if all the conditions are met—including random mating—then the allele frequencies will stabilize, and no evolutionary forces, such as natural selection, genetic drift, or gene flow, will act on the population. This concept is crucial in understanding population genetics and serves as a null hypothesis to measure evolutionary change in populations.