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Natural Selection
Natural selection is a function of evolution. It involves biological traits becoming more or less prominent depending on the needs and environment of a specific species.
666 Questions
Is natural selection same as survival of the fittest?
According to evolutionary theory, natural selection is the principle that directs evolution.
What is natural selection and does it contradict creation?
Natural selection is the driving force behind evolution, and an observable fact about nature. It is how species adapt to their environment in congress with spontaneous genetic mutation and other evolutionary mechanisms.
Does it contradict with creation? Depends what you mean by creation.
Darwin believed in a creator, he talked about "the creator" in the first book about evolution On The Origin Of Species. But unlike the average christian who believes god created all life as-is in one week, he believed a god (not neccesarily the god of any one religion) created the simplest form of microscopic life, and all life evolved from there.
That life evolved gradually, that all life has a common line of descent or "family tree" etc, are all widely accepted as fact by scientists and has been conclusively demonstrated through the fossil record and genetics.
Interestingly the bible does not just give the standard "god made everything in six days" creation account, in the first two chapters of genesis it gives two accounts, one says god created the plants and the animals, the other says he let the earth do it.
This is not an explicit mention of darwinian evolution, more likely a reference to the ancient concept that the earth can produce life, whether that ability is god-given or not.
A Somewhat More Technical Answer Natural Selection, at its most basic, is simply differential reproductive success. If I possess a variant of a heritable trait that allows me to raise more offspring successfully than those with other variants of that trait, my variant will become more common in the population. This is not an assumption or theoretical proposition. It is a logical, observable, reproducible, demographic fact. As such, it cannot contradict creation because creation says nothing about natural selection. If anything, creation contradicts the concept of common descent,which is another part of the general theory of evolution. A more general answer Natural selection, in its original form, was merely the theory that organisms will gradually change over time because of factors in the organism's environment. For example, if two groups of a particular kind of organism find themselves in different environments - say that one group is placed in an area with one kind of predator and the other groups is placed in an environment with a different predator - the two groups will eventually change on a biological level to have different characteristics which help defend them against the particular predator they face. If they change sufficiently enough, the two groups will no longer be able to interbreed, and will become separate species.
What is a natural selection results?
Adaptions that lead to greater survivability and reproductive success in the immediate environment of the individual organisms under selection pressure.
How does heritability affect natural selection?
Without the heritability of individual traits what difference would it make if the individual was selected. An individual that has a germ line mutation, say, and this mutation could confer survivability and reproductive success on progeny thus passes this mutation to said offspring is selected. Then evolution, the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms, could take place. Heritability is all as individuals are selected but populations evolve.
How does natural selection work in the environment?
Some individual organisms are better equipped to live and reproduce in their environment than others. If what makes them better equipped is heritable, their offspring will be more numerous and will tend to inherit the same traits or qualities themselves. The opposite will happen to those poorly equipped. They will have fewer or no offspring, and their negative traits will tend to disappear from the population as time goes on. These two tendencies are called positive (natural) selection and negative (natural) selection respectively. Natural selection is always relative to the environment. What is advantageous in one environment may not be so in another, and what is disadvantageous (deleterious) in one environment may not be so in another.
What is the main similarity between the process if artificial selection and natural selection?
The similarity between artificial and natural selection is that they are both weeding out unfavorable traits for favorable traits to be well equipped for survival.
What is the key to natural selection?
successful reproduction
that makes sense because with out reproduction they're wouldn't be anyone else there besides the thing that tried to reproduce dies
How does natural selection and evolution change species?
Mutations are believed by many evolutionists to provide a means for variablity in some of the characteristics of a species. For example, extra fingers and toes. However, since all mutations are DNA-destructive and result in a loss of information, increasing complexity from mutations is believed by many to be impossible. This is especially true if one subscribes to Information Theory, which states that information only comes from greater pre-existing information. Extra fingers only demonstrate an error in creating the correct number of digits, not additional information.
If a certain variation provides an advantage for an individual (or inter-breeding group) they these individuals will survive and breed where all others will die. This is natural selection (not evolution). The offspring of the survivors will all carry the traits of their parents. Therefore, the fittest will tend to thrive, but not change into a different species, at least not through this mechanism.
Evolution by natural selection results in what?
Natural selection is the nonrandom survival and reproductive success of randomly varying organisms.
The organism that is selected leaves more alleles of his progeny in the populations gene pool and evolution is just the change of that allele frequency over time in populations.
What best describes the relationship between evolution and natural selection?
Natural selection is when two organisms breed. The good genes that the child would need to survive in the habitat are passed on and the bad genes are not used. So the offspring would have had all of the right genes in order to survive.
Natural selection keeps happening and then over time the species would completely adapt to the environment and sometimes a new species is made. This means the species has evolved into a new , adapted one That is the link! Hope it helped
Who identified natural selection as a component of evolution?
The men Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace are the co discoverers of the identified theory of evolution by natural selection.
How does adaptation relate to natural selection?
Its a chicken and egg situation. Adaptation is the response to Natural Selection, and Natural Selection is the response to Adaptation. They both operate by the principle: the members of any species that are best adapted to their environment are the ones most likely to survive and reproduce the next generation, where the process repeats. That does not mean the strongest or most aggressive, they often get themselves killed off.
Natural selection can only act on traits?
Yes, traits that are phenotypical in nature and confer some survival and reproductive advantage, then the alleles that gave rise to these traits become more frequent in the populations gene pool and evolution takes place.
So, natural selection is acting on genes in the individuals and population are evolving from this process.
Is natural selection stabilizing?
Natural selection is more of an evolutionary factor than a stabilizing factor, but one could argue that the end result of evolution is an organism that is perfectly adapted to its ecological niche, in which case stability will result.
Compare and contrast natural selection and evolution?
Natural selection is the most powerful driver of evolution and it is the only mechanism of evolution ( genetic drift and gene flow are two other mechanisms ) that leads to adaptive change.
Natural selection is the nonrandom survival and reproductive success of of randomly varying organisms.
Evolution is the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms.
What do natural selection and artificial selection have in common?
They both involve the principle of differential reproductive success. Only in one case, the reproductive success is determined by mindless congruence between phenotypic attributes and the environment, and in the other case, humans make the determination what traits should propagate.
What is being selected in natural selection?
The individual, or the genes of the individual.
All organisms are variants in phenotype and behavior. So, natural selection is the immediate environment these organisms are in and those that survive and reproduce better in this environment leave more descendants which carry the genes that promoted that survival and reproduction advantage. Then those genes are more represented in the populations gene pool and this is evolution.
What are the 4 parts in natural selection?
The four parts of natural selection are
- Organisms have changed over time, and the ones living today are different from those that lived in the past. Furthermore, many organisms that once lived are now extinct. The world is not constant, but changing. The fossil record provided ample evidence for this view.
- All organisms are derived from common ancestors by a process of branching. Over time, populations split into different species, which are related because they are descended from a common ancestor. Thus, if one goes far enough back in time, any pair of organisms has a common ancestor. This explained the similarities of organisms that were classified together -- they were similar because of shared traits inherited from their common ancestor. It also explained why similar species tended to occur in the same geographic region.
- Change is gradual and slow, taking place over a long time. This was supported by the fossil record, and was consistent with the fact that no naturalist had observed the sudden appearance of a new species. [This is now contested by a view of episodes of rapid change and long periods of stasis, known as punctuated equilibrium].
- The mechanism of evolutionary change was natural selection. This was the most important and revolutionary part of Darwin's theory, and it deserves to be considered in greater detail.
Reference: http://www.caf.wvu.edu/~rwhitmor/wman224/Evolution%20and%20Natural%20Selection.htm#DARWIN
Difference between adaptation and natural selection?
Adaptation are the physical or the behavioral traits that make an organism better fits to its environment while the Variation usually comes from random mutations. Mutations are iniatially cause by a new heritable traits.
How is natural selection and evolution linked?
Natural selection is the process by which certain traits that provide a reproductive advantage become more common in a population over time, leading to evolutionary change. Evolution is the overall change in a population's genetic makeup over successive generations, driven by mechanisms such as natural selection. In essence, natural selection is one of the primary mechanisms through which evolution occurs.
Two examples of natural selection?
1) A dominant male (alpha-male) takes whatever female he desires, while inferior males in the group can't choose, such is common among apes.
2) Two creatures exist in one environment, but a drought comes. Only the creature that can live through the drought survives.
There are plenty more examples, but this should give you an idea of what natural selection is.
How and why did the eye evolve from natural selection?
There are two questions here; but if we look at the first one (how the eye evolved), the second one will also be answered. The simplest "eye" is simply light sensitivity. For example, some simple sea organisms can only distinguish between light and dark; if it's dark they shrink - some cells on their bodies are light sensitive and it triggers the response. It's obviously basic but better than no sensitivity to light at all. The next stage is a light sensitivity with some indication of motion; again some sea organisms have just that - some extra processing indicating which cells "see" the dark area first. Again, this is better than simply having light or dark sensitivity. One can see from this, that its possible to imagine lots of "next steps" - speed as well as direction, different directions, two eyes to be able to estimate direction, layers of transparent cells to form lenses in front of the light sensitive areas and so on. What's surprising is that examples can be found of most of the "intermediate" stages. A key point is that there's no "final" target that evolution is aiming for; the next stage is reached because the offspring that have more of the next stage present will tend to survive to reproduce and eventually a new species will arise that all have the next stage. Because modern eyes are essentially the result of millions of minor improvements of earlier models we've ended up with some odd results; in our own eye the retina is essentially back to front; the nerves which lead off to the visual context are in front of the light sensitive cones and rods - also if we wanted to design an eye, we wouldn't have a blind spot where the optic nerve joins the eyeball. The "why did the eye evolve" part of the question is that each step provides an advantage over not doing it.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of natural selection to an organism?
Natural selection can help creatures adapt to their enviorment. Sometimes this can cause unwanted problems.
