Directional, Stabilizing, Artificial, and Disruptive Selection Explained

Key Points Natural selection increases or decreases biological traits within a population, thereby selecting for individuals with greater evolutionary fitness. An individual with a high evolutionary fitness will provide more beneficial contributions to the gene pool of the next generation. Relative fitness, which compares an organism’s fitness to the others in the population, allows researchers to establish how a population may evolve by determining which individuals are contributing additional offspring to the next generation. Stabilizing selection, directional selection, diversifying selection, frequency -dependent selection, and sexual selection all contribute to the way natural selection can affect variation within a population. Key Terms natural selection: a process in which individual organisms or phenotypes that possess favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce fecundity: number, rate, or capacity of offspring production Darwinian fitness: the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation that is made by an average individual of the specified genotype or phenotype #Genetics #DNA #populationGenetics #phenotypes #genotype #evolutionaryFitness