Natural Selection

As proposed by Darwin, what sorts of traits are favored by natural selection?

Heritable traits that help individuals survive and reproduce more successfully than others in the same population.

In a species of snail, dark-shelled individuals are better hidden from bird predators in the shady forest, while light-shelled individuals are better hidden in well-lit brushy edge areas. If there were no areas of intermediate brightness in this habitat, which type of selection would act on shell color in these snails?

Disruptive selection

Imagine that four people are infected with HIV from a common source (an infected blood sample). Initially, the patients' HIV populations are genetically identical. By the time they develop full-blown AIDS, how would the viral populations of the four patients compare?

Each patient's viral population would be unique, specifically adapted to deal with—and overcome—his or her unique immune system responses.

Small lizards have difficulty defending their territory, but large lizards are more likely to be preyed upon by owls. Which type of selection would act on body size in these lizards under these conditions?

Stabilizing selection

The human immune system cannot effectively suppress the HIV virus on its own. What key feature of HIV makes it so hard to beat?

The HIV virus has an extremely high rate of mutation.

Natural selection is best described as _____.

a filtering process that fine-tunes the traits of populations by sorting among existing, randomly produced variations

HIV has become an important source of mortality for humans. If AIDS persists as a major factor for humans for many generations in the future, natural selection theory predicts that _____.

any heritable traits that help humans survive and reproduce in the presence of AIDS should become more frequent over time