Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Principles of evolution


  1. Natural populations have great reproductive potential
  2. But numbers remain about constant as many offspring fail to survive
  3. Due to environmental factors, competition for resources, predators, other selection pressures, that impose a limit on their number and organisms struggle to survive
  4. Individuals within a population show variation for natural selection to act on
  5. Variants with a selective advantage/which are best adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce
  6. Producing viable fertile offspring which pass on their favourite traits, thus favourable genotypes accumulate over time, leading to increased allele frequencies of favourable alleles
  7. Over many generations, evolutionary changes by natural selection and may form new species if reproductive isolation occurs which is necessary for speciation
  8. Include examples which may include: Darwin's finches, giraffes and how they got their long necks, peppered moths

Note: don't neglect points 1-4! 
Reproductive isolation is key to explaining speciation

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