BIOL 1108 Chapter Notes - Chapter 21: Inbreeding Depression, Competitive Advantage, Sexual Selection
Document Summary
Traditional view: species individually created in modern forms by divine creator, but, because creator had specific design in mind for each species, they were fixed and unchanging. Variation is essential ingredient of darwin"s theory because mechanisms he proposed for evolution, natural selection, depends on differential success-in terms of surviving and reproducing-of variants. Before darwin, variation was irrelevant, something to be ignored; after darwin, it was recognized as key to evolutionary process. Two factors contribute to phenotype: individual"s genotype, which is set of alleles possessed by individual, and environment in which individual lives. Population genetics is the study of patterns of genetic variation. Humans actually rank low in terms of overall genetic variation compared with other species. Species consists of individuals than can exchange genetic material through interbreeding. Population genetics is study of genetic variation in natural populations, which are interbreeding groups of organisms of same species living in same geographical area.
