The number of base pairs to which it corresponds varies widely across the genome (different regions of a chromosome have different propensities towards crossover) and it also depends on whether the meiosis in which the crossing-over takes place is a part of oogenesis (formation of female gametes) or spermatogenesis (formation of male gametes).
[1][2] The relationship is only rough, as the physical chromosomal distance corresponding to one centimorgan varies from place to place in the genome, and also varies between males and females since recombination during gamete formation in females is significantly more frequent than in males.
[3] In contrast, in Plasmodium falciparum one centimorgan corresponds to about 15 kb; markers separated by 15,000 nucleotides have an expected rate of chromosomal crossovers of 0.01 per generation.
B. S. Haldane, the number of chromosomal crossovers is distributed according to a Poisson distribution,[4] a genetic distance of d centimorgans will lead to an odd number of chromosomal crossovers, and hence a detectable genetic recombination, with probability where sinh is the hyperbolic sine function.
[citation needed] The centimorgan was named in honor of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan by J.