Final answer:
The ability of a gene to cause multiple effects on a phenotype is called pleiotropy, whereas polygenic inheritance involves multiple genes contributing to a single trait and epistasis involves genes affecting the expression of other genes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The ability of a gene to cause multiple effects on a phenotype is called pleiotropy. This situation occurs when a single gene influences more than one phenotypic trait. An example of pleiotropy is the human sickle cell gene, which affects red blood cell shape and can also influence resistance to malaria. Contrarily, traits like human skin color and height that are affected by the combined effects of several genes exhibit polygenic inheritance. Furthermore, epistasis is another genetic phenomenon where the expression of one gene is affected by one or several other genes, which can alter the phenotypic outcomes.