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Only variations that confer an advantage to an individual organism will survive in a population. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
Answer:
- Variations which give a survival advantage to an organism will be passed on from one generation to another.
- Along with the organisms, the environment is also changing .
- So the organism gets an edge , which enables the population to survive and exist over generations.
- But variation can also be caused by accidents in small populations that can change the frequency of some genes in a population.
For Example -
- In this case, the red and blue beetles were equally visible to the crows.
- But when the elephant stepped on the population of beetles, beetles of one characteristic accidentally survived .
- This is not a survival advantage .
- This is known as Genetic Drift .
So, while variations with a survival advantage are always passed down to the next generation, variation due to genetic drift may also be passed down , without lending any survival advantage to the organism.
