What Is Artificial Selection?

Evolution is the heart of life. Without it, life could not be sustainable. When the environment changes and the species within the environment fails to adapt or change, then all living organisms would perish over time. Charles Darwin, a biologist and naturalist, is known worldwide for his contributions to science for the extensive research and experiments conducted to help support the theory of evolution and how it worked. One basic mechanism that can be used to understand evolution is natural selection. “Resources are limited in nature, organisms with heritable traits that favor survival and reproduction will tend to leave more offspring than their peers, causing the traits to increase in frequency over generations.” (Darwin, Evolution,

“We humans have altered many different species of plants and animals for our own use by choosing individuals with desirable traits for breeding and continuing this selective breeding process for many generations.” (Lauffer & Fall) The phrase a dog is a “man’s best friend” rings true due to selective breeding that continues for many generations. Domestic dogs lineage can be traced to a common wild ancestor, the Canis Lupus. Natural selection and artificial selection are similar, but they both hold key differences. Natural selection is the survival of the best adaptable genes to a specific environment, “Natural selection causes populations to become adapted, or increasingly well-suited, to their environments over time” (Darwin, Evolution, & Natural Selection Article). Artificial selection is different because it typically happens faster than natural selection due to the fact that someone is usually choosing which traits get passed on from generation to generation to fulfill a goal. An example of this would be the animals that are being consumed everyday. The basic cow, chicken, pig, and many others animals have been artificially selected to look the way they do. This information is important because it is vital to understand how life changes and why. To comprehend how the environment changes and why natural selection works to select those with the best traits for that

After distributing the seeds, place two or three fertilizer pellets into each quadrant, followed by another layer of dirt. Finish by watering quadrants. After 2-3 weeks, count the parent generation number of trichomes and record. Then, choose 25% of the hairiest plants out of the P1 population and replant their seeds following the same directions earlier on. When plants are grown, follow the same steps and count trichomes and record. Compare both sets of P1 data to F1 data to determine if evolution took