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How does natural selection produce genetic variation within a species?
Wiki User
∙ 13y ago
It's mainly mutations in the DNA and recombination of chromosomes that produce the genetic variation. Natural selection then favors those changes that give rise to greater reproductive success.
Wiki User
∙ 13y ago
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How does natural selection predict a gradualistic mode of evolution?
Gradualism isn't a prediction of natural selection, but of our understanding the mechanisms that produce reproductive variation. Natural selection makes predictions about allele frequencies in populations and reproductive fitness.
How does genetic variation and environmental factors work together to cause natural selection?
Higher the genetic variation, better luck to deal with wider range of environmental factors hence better luck to pass the sieve of natural selection. ALSO Organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, etc) that have more traits that are favorable in the environment will live longer and have more opportunities to reproduce and create offspring that share their favorable traits. Organisms with traits unsuitable for the environment will die sooner, and will produce fewer or no offspring. If given enough time in a stable environment, the population will eventually reflect the genes best suited for it, assuming pure natural selection.
What process in which organisims with traits well suited to an environment are more likely to survive and to produce offspring is?
natural selection
Crossing over and the separation of duplicated homologous chromosomes in the first division produce genetic variation?
true
How does genetic drift work?
Genetic drift is the term used for random evolutionary developments that have equal "survival-value" with respect to natural selection. Natural selection defines broad parameters for what kind of traits organisms existing in a certain environment should ideally have, but within these parameters there is a lot of room for random drift.
What process provides the genetic variability that natural selection acts on during evolution?
The ultimate source of variation is mutation. However, recombination, or crossing over, can produce enormous amounts of variation by shuffling alleles into different combinations. Combined, the two processes produce the variation upon which natural selection can act, and which results in evolution.
How does natural selection predict a gradualistic mode of evolution?
Gradualism isn't a prediction of natural selection, but of our understanding the mechanisms that produce reproductive variation. Natural selection makes predictions about allele frequencies in populations and reproductive fitness.
How does genetic variation and environmental factors work together to cause natural selection?
Higher the genetic variation, better luck to deal with wider range of environmental factors hence better luck to pass the sieve of natural selection. ALSO Organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, etc) that have more traits that are favorable in the environment will live longer and have more opportunities to reproduce and create offspring that share their favorable traits. Organisms with traits unsuitable for the environment will die sooner, and will produce fewer or no offspring. If given enough time in a stable environment, the population will eventually reflect the genes best suited for it, assuming pure natural selection.
What the difference of selection and variation?
Selection or 'Natural selection' means that the organisms that are better adapted to their environment are most likely to stay alive and produce offspring, while Variation means that during natural selection, the organism that is better adapted to the environment starts to form more physical features to help it survive (mutations). For example, Say that there was a white desert. If there were 2 mice, one species is black while the other is white, white would survive, which would be an example of Natural Selection. Variation is if, say, the mice are slow and can still be easy prey, but later on they mutate into becoming faster, that would be variation.
Why cross pollination produces more genetic variation in the offspring than self pollination produces?
Cross-pollination produces more genetic variation in offspring because it is a different set of DNA that is breeding with the parents DNA to produce the offspring (known as sexual reproduction). In asexual reproduction, the parent plant uses a clone DNA to self pollinate thus creating an exact copy of the parent. Asexual reproduction inhibits genetic variation because the offspring will never develop mutations that could help natural selection.
How does variation lead to natural selection?
If all individuals in a species are not exactly clones of each other but have small variations in the genes (traits), some will do better when the environment changes. These traits will be "favored" over other traits. More individuals will be found with the trait.
What process in which organisims with traits well suited to an environment are more likely to survive and to produce offspring is?
natural selection
What does the term naturalized mean?
The process by which organisms that are better suited to their environment than others produce more offspring. As a result of natural selection, the proportion of organisms in a species with characteristics that are adaptive to a given environment increases with each generation. Therefore, natural selection modifies the originally random variation of genetic traits in a species so that alleles that are beneficial for survival predominate, while alleles that are not beneficial decrease. Originally proposed by Charles Darwin, natural selection forms the basis of the process of evolution.
What two limits to evolution by natural selection?
Natural selection is limited by the ability of the population to produce variation. This in turn is limited by the amount of mutation a lineage can survive. Too many mutations, and the effect becomes detrimental. Too few, and the population may not be able to adapt fast enough to changing circumstances and go extinct.
What causes changes in allele frequency during genetic drift?
Genetic drift is the spread of specific random variations throughout the gene pool in the absence of specific selection pressures. There's always random variation in the population, but there aren't always changes in the environment for the population to adapt to. So natural selection, in stead of moving the population towards adaptation, might select from that random variation to move 'sideways', as it were, to a state that's equally well-adapted to the environment as what came before, but different. As random variation may produce many variants that are, more or less, equally well-adapted to their environment, the direction of evolution that results is more or less random.
How does natural selection relate to randomness?
In all natural processes, there is an element of chance. In natural selection, most of that chance is introduced by the randomness of the genetic variations it works with. But other elements of chance exist as well. Natural selection is a stochastic phenomenon: not every less able variant will produce less offspring than the more able variant; much depends on chance environmental circumstances.
What causes genetic drift allele frequency?
Genetic drift is the spread of specific random variations throughout the gene pool in the absence of specific selection pressures. There's always random variation in the population, but there aren't always changes in the environment for the population to adapt to. So natural selection, in stead of moving the population towards adaptation, might select from that random variation to move 'sideways', as it were, to a state that's equally well-adapted to the environment as what came before, but different. As random variation may produce many variants that are, more or less, equally well-adapted to their environment, the direction of evolution that results is more or less random.
