28 Facts About Natural selection

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype.

In other words, natural selection is a key process in the evolution of a population.

Natural selection described natural selection as analogous to artificial selection, a process by which animals and plants with traits considered desirable by human breeders are systematically favoured for reproduction.

The concept of natural selection originally developed in the absence of a valid theory of heredity; at the time of Darwin's writing, science had yet to develop modern theories of genetics.

Natural selection posited natural teleology in its place, and believed that form was achieved for a purpose, citing the regularity of heredity in species as proof.

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Natural selection defined natural selection as the "principle by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved".

Natural selection was in the process of writing his "big book" to present his research when the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently conceived of the principle and described it in an essay he sent to Darwin to forward to Charles Lyell.

Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker decided to present his essay together with unpublished writings that Darwin had sent to fellow naturalists, and On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection was read to the Linnean Society of London announcing co-discovery of the principle in July 1858.

Darwin and his contemporaries, natural selection was in essence synonymous with evolution by natural selection.

However, natural selection remained controversial as a mechanism, partly because it was perceived to be too weak to explain the range of observed characteristics of living organisms, and partly because even supporters of evolution balked at its "unguided" and non-progressive nature, a response that has been characterised as the single most significant impediment to the idea's acceptance.

Natural selection relies crucially on the idea of heredity, but developed before the basic concepts of genetics.

Natural selection is here understood to act on embryonic development to change the morphology of the adult body.

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.

Natural selection variation occurs among the individuals of any population of organisms.

Artificial selection is purposive where natural selection is not, though biologists often use teleological language to describe it.

However, this does not imply that natural selection is always directional and results in adaptive evolution; natural selection often results in the maintenance of the status quo by eliminating less fit variants.

Alternatively, Natural selection can be divided according to its effect on genetic diversity.

Finally, Natural selection can be classified according to the resource being competed for.

Natural selection is seen in action in the development of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms.

Directional Natural selection occurs when an allele has a greater fitness than others, so that it increases in frequency, gaining an increasing share in the population.

Disruptive Natural selection is Natural selection favoring extreme trait values over intermediate trait values.

Some forms of balancing Natural selection do not result in fixation, but maintain an allele at intermediate frequencies in a population.

Finally, balancing Natural selection can occur through frequency-dependent Natural selection, where the fitness of one particular phenotype depends on the distribution of other phenotypes in the population.

Natural selection reduces genetic variation by eliminating maladapted individuals, and consequently the mutations that caused the maladaptation.

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Natural selection had the power, according to Stephen Jay Gould, to "dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought", such as the belief that humans have a special place in the world.

In 1922, Alfred J Lotka proposed that natural selection might be understood as a physical principle that could be described in terms of the use of energy by a system, a concept later developed by Howard T Odum as the maximum power principle in thermodynamics, whereby evolutionary systems with selective advantage maximise the rate of useful energy transformation.

Principles of natural selection have inspired a variety of computational techniques, such as "soft" artificial life, that simulate selective processes and can be highly efficient in 'adapting' entities to an environment defined by a specified fitness function.