How does natural selection cause a population to become adapted to its environment over time?

Answer 1

Genetic mutations cause variation, making some animals taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, smarter, dumber etc etc - natural selection is the tendency of the ones best suited to survive in their environment to survive longer and pass on their genes more often - those genes then become more common and the harmful variations die out, gradually reshaping all life and fine-tuning it to it's environment.

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Answer 2

In any given population, there is always a struggle for survival, e.g. competition for food, threat from predators etc.; because of natural variation no two members have identical characteristics, and those individuals who happen to have characteristics best suited to the demands of that environment (e.g. a member with long legs can run faster to escape predators, or can reach food that shorter members can't) are more likely to survive and to reproduce until eventually that characteristic becomes the norm for that population.

Answer 3

It's survival of the fittest. The classic example, which has been since disprooven but still explains the concept well is the English moth, sorry only know where it lives not it's name. anyway, before the industrial revolution, most of the moths were a lighter color, because the walls and trees they perched on were of a lighter color. As the industrial revolution came along, however, the tree trunks and other structures became darker due to the ash and smoke from the factories. Now the lighter moths stood out like sore thumbs against the darker backgrounds, so the lighter moths became more rare, due to opportunistic predators, and darker moths became more prominent, because they camouflaged against the walls. Or there is also the example of a herd of deer that got stranded on a small island. the smaller deer flourished in the new environment, but the bigger deer died out because there was not enough food for them. So eventually, there was a population of stunted deer on this particular island. hope it helped!

Answer 4

Natural selection is that an organism will get a genetic mutation, causing it to survive. They will pass this trait onto their offspring causing them to have it too. The organisms without the desirable trait will die off and you are left with the ones that survive better.

Answer 5

It modifies the population to emphasize already-existing characteristics that improve the population's fitness (ability to survive and reproduce).