Question

How does natural selection support the theory of evolution?
A. Natural selection explains how the changes in life forms that evolve over millions of years take place over shorter periods of time.
B. Natural selection explains how certain life forms are able to survive and reproduce after changes in their environmental conditions.
C. Natural selection comes from the collection of fossil record data that shows how life forms.

Answer 1

i guessed C as my answer and i just want to make sure

Answer 2

Could you give us your reasoning?

Answer 3

when i thought about it i figured that since people look at fossils and see how animals and humans have changed over the years i figured that, that is what the question was asking

Answer 4

Well actually (I'm going to jump in here if you dont mind @calliope), I think that first you need to clear up what Natural Selection is - like the definition. Do you know what it is?

Answer 5

like how things adapt

Answer 6

Close, it is the process where by certain traits will have a selective advantage over others and hence will survive and be passed on. Like the long necks for giraffes.

Answer 7

ooo okayy i understand better now, since you've explained it that way

Answer 8

Okay, so now what do you think the answer to the question is?

Answer 9

Here's a really big clue:

Evolution is caused by change. It is caused when natural selection takes place, which will generally take place when there will be a change in the environment and then the desirable traits will survive. :)

Answer 10

@shay88 "certain traits will have a selective advantage over others and hence will survive and be passed on."

this isnt exactly the case--Natural Selection is simply stated as the fact that genetic information is passed to individuals by their parents--and children are not identical (except trivial cases)

Evolution, being generally defined as the change in allele frequency in a population (due to natural selection).

Answer 11

@agreene, hmm... I dont know, that's what I've been taught. Of course I can be wrong though, as you've stated.

Answer 12

The mere fact that genetic information is passed down to non-identical children isn't really selection: that's just regular old sexual reproduction. From what I remember (it has been a while since I last did a course on evolution), the selection bit comes in when you consider that some traits that those offspring might end up with are advantageous, and others aren't. More advantageous traits are selected for because they are the ones that are more likely to be passed down, e.g. because they allow the individual to live longer or mate more effectively.

Answer 13

Yeah see this is what I was taught.

Answer 14

@calliope under the Biological Species Concept (which was the only concept in use until ~1989) you would be correct. However, due to the systematic limitations of BSC--most biologists now use the Phylogenetic Species Concept.

The issue is causation. If only useful traits were passed then evolution would not operate the way it does--by random mating. Instead everything would become homologous and recessive traits would be generally less favored.

Answer 15

Can I just interrupt here? I think you're going to scare the poor girl away who asked t(like myself) and that up there sounded like gibberish to me lol because my brain cant comprehend that yet.

Answer 16

What I described is indeed a simplistic version, and I am well aware that it is more complicated than that. However... for high school-level biology, I think it works. A favourite example would be those moths where the darker version became extremely common because pollution darkened the tree trunks. The dark colour is the advantageous trait that was selected for because moths that did not have it were more likely to be eaten by birds (although "more likely to be" does not mean ALL were eaten, and their genes remained in the gene pool), and so the dark moths were more likely to survive and have more offspring.

Answer 17

lol @shay88 Sorry...
Basically
All traits are passed... to say that they are "selected" or that "advantageous" genes are passed isn't exactly true.

Answer 18

Hahaha... Its okay, just saying that we've strayed away from the actual question.

Answer 19

But @agreene, surely you will admit that the RATE at which traits are passed down does change. There are genetic combinations that result in instant death for all offspring, or infertility for that matter, but they are rare in any population.

Answer 20

@calliope yes, I agree with that. The issue I was taking was simply the idea that all traits increase fitness are good.

Answer 21

its B.