Question

How does natural selection affect animal behavior and how behavior can affect the survival of an animal species?

Answer 1

Anyone this is not for a test so please help

Answer 2

Natural selection is the gradual process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment. It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, which is now called selective breeding.

Answer 3

Natural selection is one of the basic mechanisms of evolution, along with mutation, migration, and genetic drift.

Darwin's grand idea of evolution by natural selection is relatively simple but often misunderstood.

Answer 4

arwin’s process of natural selection has four components.

Variation. Organisms (within populations) exhibit individual variation in appearance and behavior. These variations may involve body size, hair color, facial markings, voice properties, or number of offspring. On the other hand, some traits show little to no variation among individuals—for example, number of eyes in vertebrates.
Inheritance. Some traits are consistently passed on from parent to offspring. Such traits are heritable, whereas other traits are strongly influenced by environmental conditions and show weak heritability.
High rate of population growth. Most populations have more offspring each year than local resources can support leading to a struggle for resources. Each generation experiences substantial mortality.
Differential survival and reproduction. Individuals possessing traits well suited for the struggle for local resources will contribute more offspring to the next generation.
From one generation to the next, the struggle for resources (what Darwin called the “struggle for existence”) will favor individuals with some variations over others and thereby change the frequency of traits within the population. This process is natural selection. The traits that confer an advantage to those individuals who leave more offspring are called adaptations.

In order for natural selection to operate on a trait, the trait must possess heritable variation and must confer an advantage in the competition for resources. If one of these requirements does not occur, then the trait does not experience natural selection. (We now know that such traits may change by other evolutionary mechanisms that have been discovered since Darwin’s time.)

Natural selection operates by comparative advantage, not an absolute standard of design. “…as natural selection acts by competition for resources, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates” (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859).

During the twentieth century, genetics was integrated with Darwin’s mechanism, allowing us to evaluate natural selection as the differential survival and reproduction of genotypes, corresponding to particular phenotypes. Natural selection can only work on existing variation within a population. Such variations arise by mutation, a change in some part of the genetic code for a trait. Mutations arise by chance and without foresight for the potential advantage or disadvantage of the mutation. In other words, variations do not arise because they are needed.