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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.
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]
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth. Evolution holds that all species are related and gradually change over generations. [1]
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
The discipline of biology that studies the evolution of biological organisms and the processes by which it operates, including natural selection, adaptation, common descent, and speciation. A core element of the modern synthesis , evolutionary biology integrates concepts from genetics , systematics , ecology , paleontology , developmental ...
Stabilizing selection (not to be confused with negative or purifying selection [1] [2]) is a type of natural selection in which the population mean stabilizes on a particular non-extreme trait value. This is thought to be the most common mechanism of action for natural selection because most traits do not appear to change drastically over time ...
R. A. Fisher (1890–1962), whose 1930 fundamental theorem of natural selection recognised the power of rigorous application of the theory of natural selection to population biology. [19] David Lack (1910–1973), a follower of Charles Darwin, worked to merge the fields of evolutionary biology and ecology, focusing mainly on birds and evolution.