Natural selection acts on?
90708
Natural selection acts on all living organisms.  Every time a lion catches one zebra and another gets away, that's natural selection.  Every time a certain plant's seeds grow while another's don't, that's natural selection.  If the girl you like marries someone else, that's natural selection.  \n\nNatural selection is all about biological fitness (having positive traits).  The strong survive and reproduce.  The weak don't.  It's that simple.
53112
Back to the old debate... nature or nurture?\nI think both, and the issue is a very complex one.
83548
The process of adaptation cannot be appreciated in a single organism, but only in a population. This is because adaptation is a RELATIVE condition, that is, relative with respect to a particular environment, and with respect to other individuals/species. \nNatural selection acts on the variation that arises naturally and randomly in each generation of individuals, so that those individuals best adapted to the extant environmental conditions leave more offspring which, presumably, will inherit these characteristics (assuming they're at least partly hereditary). Thus those "more adaptive" traits will spread in the population, and the population as a whole will be better adapted. \nHowever, as environmental conditions vary, some traits that were "better" may become "worse", and the population will evolve in a different direction.. or become extinct.\nThe changes in individuals that occur during their lifetime are _not_ adaptation, but a different phenomenon called ACCLIMATION.
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Adaptation? Evolution?
103711
Please take the time to\nvote for the best answer\n\nThank You!!\n\nI know this is for take yr pick\n\nConditions for natural selection\n\nThe excess fecundity, and consequent competition to survive, in every species provides the precondition for the process Darwin called natural selection. Natural selection is easiest to understand as a logical argument, leading from premises to conclusion. The argument requires the four conditions listed below.\n\n1. Reproduction. Entities must reproduce to form a new generation.\n\n2. Heredity. The offspring must tend to resemble their parents: roughly speaking, 'like must produce like'. This condition is provided by Mendelian inheritance.\n\n3. Variation in characteristics of the members of the population. \n\n4. Variation in the fitness of organisms associated with these characteristics. \n\nProvided these conditions are met for any property of a species, natural selection automatically results, as in the case of the peppered moth. If any are not, it does not. Thus entities, like planets, that do not reproduce cannot evolve by natural selection. But when the four conditions apply, the organisms with the property conferring higher fitness will leave more offspring, and the frequency of that type of organism will increase in the population. \n\nThe biologist Richard Dawkins argues that there is possibly only one condition for natural selection.
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There isn't a purpose to evolution.  It's simply what happens when you get imperfect replicators competing for limited resources.  It's like asking to purpose of current traveling through the path of least resistance.  There's no purpose there, it's just what the laws of nature dictate must happen in that circumstance.
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Feasible (sp?), perhaps. Evolution to adapt to the environment will certainly take place. Obviously no one can say for sure that will happen, especially since we don't know what would genetically change.\n\nBut even so, that'll be a couple thousand years from now. Personally, I'm not concerned.
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large gene pool\n\nrandom selection
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Actually it makes perfect sense.  Things naturally pair together, whether it be by gravity, magnetism, parasitism or whatever reason.  eventually enough atoms will link together for convienience to form a protein, enough protiens will link together to form a cell, then we have life.  cells will then pair together to form tissues, which will pair with other tissues to increase their survival rate giving us more complex organisms.  See the steps yet?  Following that we get to higher functioning organisms.  An organism's cells reproduce millions of times in that organisms lifetime and every time the DNA is replicated there is a chance for a mistake.  How many typos do you make typing a paper?  This is where variation comes from.  Evolution and extinction come from natural selection.  As the world changes things have to adapt those that don't die. If they didn't die we wouldn't call it evolution.
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Stabilizing selection. In the absence of pressures for species to change, the dominant pressure in natural selection is for the species to remain the same (this is largely because the vast majority of non-silent mutations are either neutral, or detrimental, for any given organism at any given time). This is because they have reached a local fitness maximum, and it takes a selection pressure to push them out of it.\n\nAs an analogy, think of a round-ish rock on the side of a steep mountain. Gravity forces the rock to roll downhill. But, imagine there is an upwards slope that the rock has to roll over to continue rolling downhill. If the rock's momentum (ie, the selection pressures on the organism) is not sufficient to roll it over the upslope (the local fitness maximum), then the rock will stay at that altitude (stabilizing selection).\n\nOkay, it's not an outstanding analogy, but it should get the idea across.\n\nOh, and to some of the other respondents, natural selection is NOT survival of the fittest; it's survival of the fit enough.
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Should natural disaster occurs, natural selection occurs, as the species that adaptable enough to survive the natural disaster will continue their existance and those which not adaptable enough to survive these will be wiped out from the area.\nThose which able to continue their existance will inherit the traits that enable them to survive the natural disaster and of course, those who cannot survive will not have a chance to inherit their traits. \nThose will results to the increase of the "resistance" of the surviving species to the same natural disaster.
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By eliminating weak individuals in the prey population and causing natural selection to play its role in population genetics.  \n\nI knows its a vague answer but  I can't remember all the fancy terminology in population ecology.
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Trying to get someone to do your homework paper?\n\nNatural Selection was used by 19th Century capitalists to justify explotation of the working class, on the theory that certain members of the population were genetically inferior and therefore were being chosen by natural selection to be part of the working class. Similary, the wealthy businessperson had been selected by good breeding to be wealthy. Thus, exploitation of the working class was simply the manifestation of Darwinian natural selection in human society, and was therefore a positive dynamic of nature.\n\nFor more info on the subject, see Social Darwinism; Herbert Spencer; Eugenics.
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Everything in nature has a cause, but I would contest it having a purpose. Natural selection could be described as "purposeful" in a sense because it benefits those species that can adapt to changing conditions and compete for limited resources. But the mechanism is pretty well explained and doesn't require conscious, supervisory intent. \nHurricanes happen for pretty well known causes too, and to impute a purpose in this case is a much longer stretch. But if it is absolutely required to define a purpose, you could say that hurricanes aid evolution by placing unusually high stresses on most life forms that experience them. If overpopulation has reached resource-threatening levels, this may be ultimately beneficial to a species, aiding the selection process if it doesn't wipe them out.
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Creation. Even if evolution were true, the elements that got together and evolved had to have been created. Otherwise something would have to evolve from nothing.
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Organisms that are the best fit tend to survive longer and reproduce more, having more offspring and passing on their DNA to future generations.  If mutations occur in the DNA that makes the organism better able to survive, it's likely that it will be passed on.  If you look at organisms' DNA over time, you'd find the changes/mutations that have occured.\n\nThe above responder is absolutely incorrect about mutations: they CAN add nucleotides to the sequence of DNA. In fact, they can make 3 small-scale changes: point mutations (changing from one nucleotide into another), insertions (adding nucleotides), as well as deletions (removing nucleotides). I know this for a fact because we have just recently finished studying this exact subject matter in my biology class.  Also check out my source link and you'll find that out.
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Ok "harini" you are a retard. NEVER ONCE did Darwin use the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his definition of natural selection. It was later scientists who coined that phrase. Maybe you should read Darwin's literature before making ignorant statements.\n\nSorry, to answer your question, monkeys will continue to evolve and adapt to their changing enviromnents, as long as they don't go extinct sometime in the near future.