AP Bio Insta-Review Topic 7.1: Intro to Natural Selection

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What is natural selection?

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Natural selection is the process by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.

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What is directional selection?

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Directional selection is a type of natural selection that favors one extreme phenotype over the mean or other extreme, leading to a shift in the population's phenotype distribution.

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What is disruptive selection?

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Disruptive selection is a type of natural selection that favors extreme phenotypes over intermediate phenotypes, potentially leading to speciation.

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What is stabilizing selection?

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Stabilizing selection is a type of natural selection that favors intermediate variants and acts against extreme phenotypes.

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What is reproductive fitness?

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Reproductive fitness refers to the ability of an organism to pass on its genes to the next generation, often measured by the number of offspring produced.

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What is the fitness of a sterile hybrid offspring?

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The fitness of a sterile hybrid offspring, such as a mule, is 0 because it cannot reproduce.

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What is the role of environmental changes in natural selection?

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Environmental changes can create new selective pressures that influence which traits are advantageous, leading to changes in population over time.

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How does the peppered moth illustrate directional selection?

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The peppered moth became darker during the industrial revolution due to pollution darkening tree bark, favoring darker moths and demonstrating directional selection.

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What is the difference between individuals and populations in the context of evolution?

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Evolution occurs at the population level, not at the individual level; individuals do not evolve, but populations do over generations.

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What is an example of stabilizing selection in nature?

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An example of stabilizing selection is human birth weight, where very low or very high weights have lower survival rates, favoring average weights.