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The term natural selection is most often defined to operate on heritable traits, because these directly participate in evolution. However, natural selection is "blind" in the sense that changes in phenotype can give a reproductive advantage regardless of whether or not the trait is heritable.
[citation needed] Carter defined two forms of the anthropic principle, a "weak" one which referred only to anthropic selection of privileged spacetime locations in the universe, and a more controversial "strong" form that addressed the values of the fundamental constants of physics. Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
The outcome of evolution is not a perfectly designed organism. The end products of natural selection are organisms that are adapted to their present environments. Natural selection does not involve progress towards an ultimate goal. Evolution does not strive for more advanced, more intelligent, or more sophisticated life forms. [25]
When this happens, natural selection weeds out the very bad mutations, while leaving the others relatively unaffected. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] While evolution has no "foresight" to know which environment will be encountered in the future, some mutations cause major disruption to a basic biological process, and will never be adaptive in any environment.
Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection is an idea about genetic variance [1] [2] in population genetics developed by the statistician and evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher. The proper way of applying the abstract mathematics of the theorem to actual biology has been a matter of some debate, however, it is a true theorem.
Reinforcement, also called the Wallace effect, is the process by which natural selection increases reproductive isolation. [19] It may occur after two populations of the same species are separated and then come back into contact. If their reproductive isolation was complete, then they will have already developed into two separate incompatible ...
[194] [195] [184] If such conditions were present on early Earth, then natural selection would favor the proliferation of such autocatalytic sets, to which further functionalities could be added. [ 196 ] [ 197 ] [ 198 ] Self-assembly of RNA may occur spontaneously in hydrothermal vents.