O.K. What is the difference between natural selection and evolution?

Question

Natural selection seems to make more sense to me. A white mouse living in a white landscape lives to breed and black ones die out. Evolution? Why take millions of years to change from an ape to a man? Bit slow to be a successful survival tool?

Answer 1

Evolution just means "change".

Natural selection is the *CAUSE* of that change.

More specifically, evolution is defined as the change in the inherited traits of an organism (like a species) over many generations. That's all.

Natural selection is the process by which survival in nature *causes* slow change to a species over many generations. Those inherited traits that provide some survival advantage spread into the population. It takes a lot of time for a trait to spread, even if it is *very* advantageous.

It is *really* important to understand that evolution and natural selection are what happens to the *species*, not to individuals. So the fact that a white mouse lives and a black mouse dies (because they are visible) isn't the issue. It's the fact that *ALL* the white mice are surviving better than *ALL* the black mice. So that trait ... white fur ... will tend to spread into the mouse population faster than black fur.

But it takes *time* ... many generations ... for traits to spread into a population.

And it often takes even longer time for environments to change. It's not like the environment gets white one day (and thus favors white mice). But an ice age can take many thousands of years to arrive and slowly, year-by-year, the landscape gets whiter and whiter, and the ratio of white mice to black slowly grows.

So with a trait like the color of fur, there is only so fast natural selection (and thus evolution) can occur.

But the change from apes to man is an accumulation of *MANY* traits ... and thus takes hundreds of thousands of generations. That kind of evolution (caused by natural selection) took between 3 to 5 *million* years.

Sometimes it *is* too slow to be a survival tool ... and the species does not survive. I.e. if the environment changes faster than the species can evolve in response, then the species goes extinct.

But sometimes evolution *is* fast enough to keep pace with a changing environment ... or to allow the species to spread into a new environment. In which case, many millions of years later, you will find a *significantly* different species ... an ape species will have slowly evolved into humans.

Answer 2

Natural selection leads to evolution - the white mice survive and the black mice die. The species of mice are then all white - they have evolved.

Ape to man? That's not one change, it's thousands of adaptations and that'll only happen when there have been lots of selection pressures like in the mouse situation above. Also, there are two kinds of selection pressure. The mouse situation is a hard selection pressure - it's a life or death thing and the result is pretty quick. There are also soft selection pressures which don't kill, but provide a slight disadvantage. These take longer to eradicate a characteristic from the gene pool.

Answer 3

There is no difference, evolution happens through natural selection. You can also describe this as "survival of the fittest". The traits that help something survive are passed along to future generations because those that don't possess those traits die and do not get to reproduce. So in other words, if your reproducing it's because you had those traits that were useful to living in your environment. If you believe the ape to man theory of evolution, it took so long to happen because these changes occured by generation. An ape didn't wake up each morning looking more and more like a human. Their offspring looked a little bit different, then their offsprings offspring looked more different, and so and and so forth looking more and more human as the generations passed. The white mice surviving over the black mouse is just because they blend in to their environment more so the black mice are more likely to be eaten by birds or other predators so they will eventually die out of that white landscape while the white ones will be able to reproduce more because there are more of them.

Answer 4

well natural selection is a process which we can see happening now, species which are not well adapted have become extinct and others which are well adapted to their environment have thrived. The theory of evolution is harder to proove since it requires much more evidence. BUt I will try to answer all the criticisms ->Why isn't there any fossil evidence of any of the missing links between modern species? Answer: Well genetic mutations could change species dramatically meaning there would not have been an intermediate species or it could have happened quickly meaning there were very few of the intermediate species making their remains harder to find. ->Why don't species that have been endangered for several hundred years simply evolve in order to survive? Answer: species can not choose to evolve, genetic mutation is a random process, getting the right combination to survive in a particular environment is like winning the lottery, it can take a long time (or not) ->Why have some species, such as the tuatara, remained unchanged for millions of years and not evolved in any way? Answer: genetic mutations are a random process, it can happen quickly, slowly or not at all. The species you mentioned may have changed slightly in the 700 years but people have not noticed the small changes(or not). ->Why is mutation accepted as a form of adapting to survive, when all evidence of mutation generally results in a weakening of the chance of survival? Answer: humans generally see any mutation/abnormality as a bad thing, who would know that a third arm might be useful? Also it does not matter if 99% of mutations are bad, evolution only requires that some genetic mutations are good(anything >0%) as natural selection will generally get rid of any bad mutations. ->If all species are related then why can't they mate? Answer: reproduction generally requires two species with similar genetic material, I think it is DNA chain lengths which are important.

Answer 5

1) somethimes the environment itself changes that slowly
2) While the selctin is happening, the creatures are surviving, right? :) It is a matter of striking a balance to find a ecological niche, and optimizing features to match the environement
3) There are a lot more changes that have to take place in a slowly changing environment to go from an "ape" to a man then fro a white mouse to a black mouse.

Here is a fast example of evolution at work: Notice how kids have some features of each their parents, and even their older ancestors. That is what happens in natural selection on a single generation basis in humans, in a stable environment.

Clearly all of the processes of natural selection are happening, even in your own family! :)

Answer 6

Natural Selection is an observed process. Everone agrees this happens.
Evolution (goo-to-you) is the hypothesis that natural selection plus mutations plus millions of years give rise to one kind of animal changing into another.
This is not observed, is not a scientific fact, not even a theory. It is a hypothesis. And one that is not supported by the evidence.
We observe that mutations do harm and do not add genetic information. Evolution requires the addition of vast amounts of new information. Evolutionists have no observed mechanism for this.

Unfortunately they often confuse people with 'bait and switch' tactics. They point to natural selection, call it evolution, and then claim that goo-to-you evolution is proven.

Look out for this tactic - it used widely even by prominent scientists (eg Dawkins) who should know better.
It is much like people who claim that evolution just means 'change'. This is meaningless. Of course change happens - your genes are different to your parents! Of course NS happens - look at Darwin's finches, of peppered moths. But molecules-to-man evolution is different altogether.

The generally poor answers above show how badly understood the alleged process of evolution actually is by those who seem to think evolution is proven.
Back to school! Try listening to creationists, who generally speaking have a much better understanding of the evolutionary hypothesis than the evolutionists.

Take a look here for many articles on NS
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3035/

Answer 7

I agree wholeheartedly with chas_chas_123.
It is a pity that evolutionists make the quatum jump from natural selection; which is simply adaptation (usually involving a loss of genetic information), to "molecules-to-man" evolution which requires vast amounts of additional genetic information.
No natural increase in genetic information has ever been observed even though evolutionary theory suggests it must be happening constantly.
And by the way... change doesn't take time to be effective over generations; genetic changes can take place from one generation to the next. Observed changes in species (like Darwin's finches) have been seen to happen quickly. Natural selection (not evolution) in action.

Answer 8

Natural selection leads to evolution

Answer 9

we generally dont view them seperatrly they idea is that they go together. evolution occurs through natural selection. we evolve miniscule features, which, being superior keep us alive. over time these miniscule features add up and we become a totally different thing. while this is evolution, it is also natural selection. that process, does take millions of years..why? because the changes are so incredible tiny that noticable ones take thousands of years to occur, and so, millions to add up.

Answer 10

Evolution is the change in animals over successive generations.

Natural selection is a theory (or concept...or process) of evolution. Lamarkism and intelligent design are two other theories of evolution that I can think of right now.