(a) Define natural selection and artificial selection.?

Question

(a) Define natural selection and artificial selection.
(b) List 3 similarities and 3 differences between the two

Answer 1

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Answer 2

In any population, there will be genetic mutations. If those mutations prove to be more successful at surviving, the descendents of those members will increase. Less successful mutations or the old forms will decrease. That is selection.

The question is, how is the selection happening. If a peacock that grows a prettier tail is more appealing to the peahen, and mates more often, it is natural selection. If humans like peacock feathers and take them in and domesticate them and breed them, that is artificial selection.

What is the same: populations change over time, more successful members of the population have more offspring, more members of the population will have the successful mutation.

What is different: humans vs. nature creating the selective force, the long term goals (nature has none), and individual vs. population benefit.

From this I mean that in the wild, natural selection has to benefit the individual. In artificial selection, it benefits the population as a whole.

For example, the most successful populations of animals on the planet are domesticated farm animals. The only possibly surviving wild horse is the Wild Asian Horse, which has a population so small in the wild that it is thought to be extinct. (So called wild horses like the mustangs that roam federal land in the American southwest are really feral domesticated horses.) However there are 9.2 million domesticated horses in the US alone.

A domesticated horse obviously works for people, whereas a wild horse pursues its own interests. A domesticated horse is a slave. Obviously, this does not benefit an individual horse. But the specials of domesticated horses is equally obviously benefitting enormously.

Answer 3

Natural selection is the evolutionary process by which favorable traits that are heritable become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable traits that are heritable become less common.

Artificial Selection is human intervention in animal or plant reproduction to ensure that certain desirable traits are represented in successive generations.