5 Keys to Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection
1. Individuals have a lot more offspring than they should
Published in
1 min readOct 28, 2016
- Species tend to produce an excess of offspring, and since resources are limited, this means that…
2. Not all the offspring can survive
- Offspring will compete for survival based on their biological fitness
3. Each offspring is different
- If all the offspring were the same, then it would be random who survives
- Fortunately, each offspring has different genes, so some are more fit to survive than others
4. Parents can pass on their traits to their offspring
- Offspring that are fit to survive grow to become parents and have their own offspring
- Therefore, they pass on the traits that allowed them to survive long enough to become parents
5. Different traits give offspring different abilities to survive
- Some traits will help offspring survive, and some will hurt them
- Nature is a strict judge and selects which ones survive and makes sure the traits that help survival stay in the gene pool while less ideal traits disappear through adaptations
