Evolution Of Evolution And Natural Selection

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Evolution can be defined as the process through which the characteristics of a species undergo changes over a number of generations through the process of natural selection. There are different mechanisms that try to explain the evolution process and these are mutation, migration, genetic drift and natural selection. However for natural selection and genetic drift to take place there must exist a certain type of genetic variation.
To begin with natural selection can be defined as the process through which organisms that are better adapted to a certain environment survive and produce fertile off springs. Organisms that do not seem to adapt in that particular environment are left out. For natural selection to occur there must be a number of processes that the particular organisms must display and this is in accordance with Darwin’s idea of evolution. To begin with there is the variation of traits. This can be seen through the fact that some organism within a species are different from the others in terms of color, size and other factors. Variations in the genes of these species brings about these differences.
These variations are caused by mutation leading to the development of new alleles in a given population of a particular species. After variation of traits there are differential reproduction. Due to the fact that the off springs produce tend to be more than the number that can be supported by that ecological niche, the struggle for shelter, mates and food is developed the best suited organisms are able to survive and reach maturity. After reaching maturity they can now reproduce fertile off springs that have the genetic complement of the parents. The offspring tend to inherit the traits posed by the parents and thus they a...

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...f these random drift include bottleneck and founder effect (Coyne, 2009).
Bottleneck is known to occur when a population experiences a major decline due to factors brought about by the environment examples of these factors include; earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters that can cause decline in population. These events may lead to a situation where there is genetic diversity thus making the surviving population vary widely with the original population. On the other hand founder effect can be defined as the loss of genetic variation due to the occurrence of a new population that is set up by a small number of individuals whom have disseminated from a larger population. This leads to the prevalence of certain genetic traits since there is no genetic diversity and this may lead to genetic diseases being popular amongst that particular group of individuals.

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