Independent assortment effectively means that every gene passes onto the offspring independently of other genes. This creates variety in that each of our chromosomes is potentially a random mix of the genes from both our parents chromosomes. The mechanism for assortment is recombination, but not all genes display random assortment in reality, as genes close to each other on a chromosome will not usually be split by recombination. This is called linkage disequilibrium, and means that some genes are (almost) always passed on to