Use an example to explain how natural selection can lead to evolution?

Answer 1

An example of evolution resulting from natural selection was discovered among "peppered" moths living near English industrial cities.
These insects have varieties that vary in wing and body coloration from light to dark. During the 19th century, sooty smoke from coal burning furnaces killed the lichen on trees and darkened the bark.

When moths landed on these trees and other blackened surfaces, the dark colored ones were harder to spot by birds who ate them and, subsequently, they more often lived long enough to reproduce.
Over generations, the environment continued to favor darker moths. As a result, they progressively became more common. By 1895, 98% of the moths in the vicinity of English cities like Manchester were mostly black.
Since the 1950's, air pollution controls have significantly reduced the amount of heavy particulate air pollutants reaching the trees, buildings, and other objects in the environment.
As a result, lichen has grown back, making trees lighter in color. In addition, once blackened buildings were cleaned making them lighter in color. Now, natural selection favors lighter moth varieties so they have become the most common. This trend has been well documented by field studies undertaken between 1959 and 1995 by Sir Cyril Clarke from the University of Liverpool.
The same pattern of moth wing color evolutionary change in response to increased and later decreased air pollution has been carefully documented by other researchers for the countryside around Detroit, Michigan.

While it is abundantly clear that there has been an evolution in peppered moth coloration due to the advantage of camouflage over the last two centuries, it is important to keep in mind that this story of natural selection in action is incomplete.
There may have been additional natural selection factors involved.

Most evolution involves slight mutations that become more useful in the surroundings than the original. Penguins for example may have once had the ability to fly but 'gave up' this ability in order to swim faster and stronger to avoid predators. This led to stubby wings suited to water rather than larger ones for catching air.


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Answer 2

I will try to give a short and easy to understand example of this. Imagine that you have two breeds of rodents. We'll call them the movers and the stayers. Suppose they reproduce seasonally like many animals. Suppose they are both very localized in the same area.

The male Movers tend to invade and kill the litters of the Stayers. The female Movers protect their young while the male Movers are doing this, gathering food, etc.

The male Stayers on other hand habitually kill the litters of other Stayers. This is an evolutionarily unstable act, and since the numbers of the Stayers is decreasing, while there is no threat to the movers, eventually the Stayers go extinct while the Movers flourish.

Another quicker example is to take a species like a gorilla. Take random mutations and see what happen. Suppose randomly there is a gorilla that was born with sharpened teeth and the ability to eat meat as well as vegetation. This would be a very, very evolutionarily stable change. Now suppose another is born without the ability to climb. Say without opposible thumbs. This creature surely wouldn't survive long, and thus would not reproduce, and so the new offspring wouldn't be in the gene pool any longer.

The first is an example of natural selection, and the second is about how evolution will actually work. Humans for example got sharpened teeth, and a wider range of diet, along with better orginizational skills and communication skills, etc. If prehistorically, a human was born without the ability to run, for example, chances are that he would be the last to have that gene.

Answer 3

Some animals are more fit than others (Take humans for instance: some are smarter, prettier, and more adapt to living than others). Then the mates try to choose these ones that are better and have the best genes. The result is that the best genes continue to disperse and the inferior ones disappear.

Answer 4

if people moved to the mountains for a very long time then the people with smaller lungs would die and not be able to reproduce, while people with bigger lungs would live and passon that trait to their children.

Answer 5

ahah i got tha perfect example;

a chicken like animal breading with another chicken like animal which of whom both are not of the same species, both bread and sooner or later out pops a chicken lol, something like that right?

Answer 6

i dont belive in evoluition