Evolution

of Populations:
selection & genetic diversity
Campbell Chapter 23
Closer look at selection: fitness
Closer look at selection: fitness
Closer look at selection: fitness
Evolutionary or Darwinian fitness is the extent to which an individual
contributes genes to future generations compared to other individuals in
the same population.
Physically stronger individuals are not necessarily the fittest in a Darwinian
sense.
Survival of the fittest is an inaccurate description of natural selection.
Survival is essential but not sufficient to be selected. Selected individuals
are those that pass their genes to the next generations so not only they
need to survive but they MUST reproduce.
Individuals passing down their genes are not the absolute best (i.e the
fittest) but the ones that are good enough under the prevailing conditions.
Fitness is a relative measure: it is only meaningful when compared to the
success of other individuals in the population.
Selection and adaptations
Adaptations in the micro and macro
evolutionary contexts
In the microevolutionary context an adaptations is a inherited
characteristics of organisms that enhance their survival and
reproduction in specific environments. E.g. Individuals with the
mutation allowing them to digest lactose as adults were better
adapted to a pastoral life-style than individuals without the mutation.
In the macroevolutionary contex, an adaptation is a derived character
that evolved in response to a specific selective agent. E.g. snakes have
movable bones in their skulls which are an adaptations to feed on
large prey without limbs.
Why Natural Selection Cannot Fashion Perfect
Organisms?
Why Natural Selection Cannot Fashion Perfect
Organisms?
1. Selection can act only on existing
variations
2. Evolution is limited by historical
constraints
3. Adaptations may involve trade-offs
4. Chance, natural selection, and the
environment interact
Modes of selection
Selection and Drift
The effect of selection can be mask
by drift in small population. For
directional selection to be
noticeable over many generations
in a small population, it must be
strong. Strong selection occurs
when important differences in
fitness exist among individuals.
The relative effect of selection and
drift on allele frequencies can be
explore with the software allele A1.
Selection and genetic variation
Balancing selection: heterozygote advantage
Balancing selection: Frequency dependent
selection
Preservation of genetic variation by selection
Diploidy maintains genetic variation in form of hidden recessive alleles.
Heterozygotes can carry recessive alleles that are hidden from effects of
selection
Balancing selection occurs when natural selection maintains stable frequencies
of two or more phenotypic forms in a population. Balancing selection includes:
Heterozygote advantage and Frequency-dependent selection
Heterozygote advantage occurs when heterozygotes have a higher fitness than
do both homozygotes. Natural selection will tend to maintain two or more
alleles at that locus
Frequency-dependent selection: fitness of phenotype declines if it becomes too
common in population. Selection can favour whichever phenotype less common
in population