Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Adaptation is related to biological fitness, which governs the rate of evolution as measured by change in allele frequencies. Often, two or more species co-adapt and co-evolve as they develop adaptations that interlock with those of the other species, such as with flowering plants and pollinating insects .
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 ...
This will lead allele frequencies to change, leaving a signature of non-neutral evolution (Galtier et al. 2001). The excess of AT to GC mutations in human genomic regions with high substitution rates (human accelerated regions, HARs) implies that BGC has occurred frequently in the human genome (Pollard et al. 2006, Galtier and Duret 2007).
Natural selection is tantamount to common descent in that long-term occurrence and selection pressures can lead to the diversity of life on earth as found today. All adaptations—documented and undocumented changes concerned—are caused by natural selection (and a few other minor processes).
Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams.Williams, in what is now considered a classic by evolutionary biologists, [1] outlines a gene-centered view of evolution, [2] disputes notions of evolutionary progress, and criticizes contemporary models of group selection, including the ...
It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection , which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.
It defines evolution as the change in allelic frequencies within a population caused by genetic drift, gene flow between sub populations, and natural selection. Natural selection is emphasised as the most important mechanism of evolution; large changes are the result of the gradual accumulation of small changes over long periods of time.
The Baldwin effect compared to Lamarck's theory of evolution, Darwinian evolution, and Waddington's genetic assimilation. All the theories offer explanations of how organisms respond to a changed environment with adaptive inherited change. In evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect describes an effect of learned behaviour on evolution.