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How natural selection changes a population

Inherited differences can become more common when they affect reproductive success.

Individuals in a population vary. When some differences are heritable and influence how successfully individuals leave offspring, those differences can become more or less common over generations. This is natural selection.

The population changes; an individual does not acquire a useful inherited trait simply because it needs one. What is advantageous also depends on the environment. A feature that helps in one setting may be costly in another, so evolution has no fixed destination of becoming “better” in every respect.

A small example

In a hypothetical insect population, birds more often catch a visible colour variant. If colour is inherited, the better-camouflaged variant may become more common.

Keep in mind

Natural selection is one mechanism of evolution. Chance and other processes also change populations.

Source & attribution

Biology 2e — Understanding Evolution

OpenStax contributors · OpenStax, Rice University

CC BY 4.0. Rewritten as a self-contained explanation; the example and reflection are Vakataka additions. Written and edited with AI assistance. No source images reproduced.

Source edition: 2024-12-20T02:54:45Z

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