Natural and Artificial Selection

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Introduction

Many scientists in the past, such as Aristotle and Plato, believed that there were no changes in populations; however, other scientists, such as Darwin and Wallace, arose and argued that species inherit heritable traits from common ancestors and environmental forces drives out certain heritable traits that makes the species better suited to survive or be more “fit” for that environment. Therefore, species do change over a period of time and they were able to support their theory by showing that evolution does occur. There were four basic mechanisms of evolution in their theory: mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection. Natural selection is the gradual process by which heritable traits that makes it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce increases, whereas there is a decline in those who do have those beneficial heritable traits (Natural Selection). For example, there is a decrease in rain which causes a drought in the finches’ environment. The seeds in the finches’ environment would not be soft enough for the smaller and weaker beak finches to break; therefore, they cannot compete with the larger and stronger beak finches for food. The larger and stronger beak finches has a heritable trait that helps them survive and reproduce better than others for that particular environment which makes them categorized under natural selection (Freeman, 2002).

On the other hand, artificial selection is the exact opposite of natural selection. Artificial selection occurs when humans manually modify or manipulate certain desirable trait(s) that will appear in the offspring (Artificial Selection). Charles Darwin formed this term when he did selective breeding of animals such as pigeons, cat...

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... for the experiment to stay consistent. We would make sure that everyone remembers and does what they have to do. Also, we would do more than just two generations because the more generations we have, the better the results would be which would help us clearly see if our data supports or refutes out hypothesis.

References

Freeman, Scott. Biological Science. 4th. University of Washington: Pearson Education, 2002.

Mifflin, Houghton. "artificial selection science definition." Your Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Web. 10 May 2014.

Mifflin, Houghton. "natural selection science definition." Your Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Web. 10 May 2014.

Zacherl, Danielle. “Biology 171 Evolution and Biodiversity.” National Association of Research in Science Teaching 2007 Annual Meeting, New Orleans LA. (2007):n. page. Print.

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