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Natural Selection

Natural selection is the process by which organisms with traits that better suit their environment tend to survive and pass on those traits, while organisms with less advantageous traits tend not to survive or reproduce. Over many generations, this process allows populations to adapt to their environments. Traits like antibiotic resistance in bacteria or camouflage in moths provide examples of how natural selection can act on populations over time through the survival and reproduction of individuals with favorable variations in their genes.

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46 views

Natural Selection

Natural selection is the process by which organisms with traits that better suit their environment tend to survive and pass on those traits, while organisms with less advantageous traits tend not to survive or reproduce. Over many generations, this process allows populations to adapt to their environments. Traits like antibiotic resistance in bacteria or camouflage in moths provide examples of how natural selection can act on populations over time through the survival and reproduction of individuals with favorable variations in their genes.

Uploaded by

Edron Bullo Jr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Natural selection

Natural selection is a central concept of evolution. The English biologist Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace, and is sometimes called the survival of the fittest.[1] Darwin chose the name as an analogy with
artificial selection (selective breeding).

Natural selection is the process where organisms with favorable traits are more likely to reproduce. In doing
so, they pass on these traits to the next generation. Over time this process allows organisms to adapt to their
environment. This is because the frequency of genes for favourable traits increases in the population.

Members of a species are not all alike, partly because of differences in heredity (genetics). This is true even
with children of the same parents. Some of these differences might make one organism better at surviving and
reproducing than others in a particular habitat. When this organism reproduces, its children get the genes,
which gave it the advantage. Some adaptations are extremely long-lasting, useful in many habitats. The
evolution of wings in birds environment stays the same. If the environment changes enough, then another
organism might do better.

Contents
The process
Examples
Antibiotic resistance
Camouflage
Sexual selection
References

The process
Natural selection explains why living organisms change over time to have the anatomy, the functions and
behaviour that they have. It works like this:

1. All living things have such fertility that their population size could increase rapidly forever.
2. Actually, the size of populations does not increase to this extent. Mostly, numbers remain about
the same.
3. Food and other resources are limited. So, there is competition for food and resources.
4. No two individuals are alike. Therefore, they do not have the same chance to live and
reproduce.
5. Much of this variation is inherited. The parents pass the traits to the children through their
genes.
6. The next generation comes from those that survive and reproduce. The elimination is caused
by the relative fit between the individuals and the environment they live in. After many
generations, the population has more helpful genetic differences, and fewer harmful ones.[2]
Natural selection is really a process of elimination.[3]
Examples
There are now quite a number of examples of natural selection in natural populations.[4]

Antibiotic resistance

A well-known example of natural selection in action is the development of


antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. Since the discovery of penicillin in
1928 by Alexander Fleming, antibiotics have been used to fight bacterial
diseases. Natural populations of bacteria contain, among their vast numbers of
individual members, considerable variation in their genetic material, as the
result of mutations. When exposed to antibiotics, most bacteria die quickly,
but some have mutations that make them slightly less susceptible. If the
exposure to antibiotics is short, these individuals will survive the treatment.
The elimination of individuals which have no resistance is an example of
natural selection.

Given enough time, and repeated exposure to the antibiotic, a population of


antibiotic-resistant bacteria will emerge. This leads to what is known as an
evolutionary arms race, or co-evolution, in which bacteria continue to develop
strains that are less susceptible to antibiotics, while medical researchers
continue to develop new antibiotics that can kill them.[5] Response strategies
typically include the use of different, stronger antibiotics; however, new
Resistance to antibiotics is
strains of MRSA have recently emerged that are resistant even to these increased by the survival of
drugs.[6] A similar situation occurs with pesticide resistance in plants and individuals which are
insects, and with malarial resistance to quinine. immune to the effects of the
antibiotic. Their offspring
inherit the resistance,
Camouflage creating a new population of
resistant bacteria.
One famous case study is the study of peppered moth evolution, and there are
many other examples. Most of these day-flying moths were light in colour, but
just a few of the moths were dark. At first, the light coloured moths survived better because they were
camouflaged against the light colour of the nearby trees. This made it hard for birds to see them.

When factories were built, the pollution made all the trees look black. Now the light coloured moths were
obvious against the dark bark. The dark coloured moths had the advantage after the environment changed. The
genes controlling dark colour spread through the population of moths. After the second world war, controls
against pollution worked to make the environment cleaner. Then the lighter moths once again had the
advantage, and are now much more common.

Mimicry is another example: Some harmless insects mimic other insects which are dangerous, or which taste
foul. Mimicry evolves because the better mimics survive better. They live to produce more offspring than the
less good mimics. The genes of the better mimics become more common in the species. Over time, mimic
species get closer to their models.

Sexual selection
Sexual selection is a special kind of natural selection. It is a theory of Charles Darwin that certain evolutionary
traits can be explained by competition within a species. Darwin defined sexual selection as the effects of the
"struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex".[7] It is
usually males who fight each other. Traits selected by male combat are
called secondary sexual characteristics (including horns, antlers, etc.)
and sometimes referred to as 'weapons'. Traits selected by mate choice
are called 'ornaments'.

Females often prefer to mate with males with external ornaments—


exaggerated features of morphology. Genes that enable males to
develop impressive ornaments or fighting ability may simply show off
greater disease resistance or a more efficient metabolism—features
that also benefit females. This idea is known as the 'good genes'
hypothesis. Sexual selection is still being researched and discussed
today.[8]

Ernst Mayr said:

"Since Darwin’s days it has become clear that this kind Illustration from The Descent of Man
of selection includes a far wider realm of phenomena, and selection in relation to sex by
and instead of sexual selection it is better referred to as Charles Darwin showing the Tufted
selection for reproductive success... genuine selection, Coquette Lophornis ornatus, female
not elimination, is involved, unlike survival selection. on left, ornamented male on right.
Considering how many new kinds of selection for
reproductive success are discovered year after year, I am
beginning to wonder whether it is not even more important than survival selection, at least in
certain higher organisms".[9]

References
1. Darwin, Charles (annotated by James T. Costa). 2009. The annotated Origin: a facsimile of the
first edition of On the Origin of Species. Harvard, Cambridge, Mass.
2. Evolution 101: Natural Selection (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_25)
from the Understanding Evolution webpages made by the University of California at Berkeley
3. Mayr, Ernst. 2001. What evolution is. Harvard. p117.
4. Endler J.A. 1986. Natural selection in the wild. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press. ISBN 0-691-00057-3.
5. "MRSA Superbug News" (https://web.archive.org/web/20060426235836/http://www.inboxrobot.
com/news/MRSASuperbug). Archived from the original (http://www.inboxrobot.com/news/MRS
ASuperbug) on 2006-04-26. Retrieved 2006-05-06.
6. Schito GC (2006). "The importance of the development of antibiotic resistance in
Staphylococcus aureus". Clin Microbiol Infect. 12 Suppl 1: 3–8. doi:10.1111/j.1469-
0691.2006.01343.x (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1469-0691.2006.01343.x). PMID 16445718 (h
ttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16445718). [1] (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-0691.2006.01343.
x)
7. Darwin C. 1871. The Descent of Man and selection in relation to sex John Murray, London
8. Cronin, Helena 1991. The ant and the peacock: altruism and sexual selection from Darwin to
today. Cambridge University Press.
9. Mayr, Ernst 1997. The objects of selection (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/6/2091) Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 2091-94.

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