The Evolution Debate essays

The Evolution Debate essays Charles Darwin first used the term natural selection in his book The Origin of Species, which presented his distinctive views on evolution. Though the concept of evolution as such did not originate with Darwin, he was the first and most unswerving defender of the mechanism of natural selection, which derives from the concepts of survival of the fittest and differential reproduction. Hence the concept of natural selection that underlies much of contemporary evolutionary study and research. The concept has its ancestry in the idea of the survival of the fittest, which states that those organisms that are best modified to their environment are those that are most likely to survive. In other words, the organisms most capable of existing in a given environment will tend to outlive those that are less skilled in surviving in the same environment. The next concept, called differential reproduction, is an effect to survival of the fittest. Differential reproduction is the idea that those organisms best adapted to a given environment will be most likely to survive to reproductive age and have offspring of their own. Organisms that are victorious in their environments will be more likely to be successful in reproduction, and therefore the better-adapted organisms will reproduce at a greater rate than the less well-adapted organisms. Differential reproduction, or difference in the rates of reproduction of differently-adapted organisms, will favor the better-adapted organisms at the expense of the worse-adapted ones. Natural selection is the process by which the organisms with the best or most favorable genetic adaptations out-compete other organisms in a population, tending to displace the less-adapted organisms. This process derives concepts of survival of the fittest and differential reproduction. Natural selection takes place over the course of many generations and can change the basic at ...