Q. 1. What are the different ways in which individuals with a particular trait may increase in a population?
The different ways in which individuals with a particular trait may increase in a population are
1) Natural Selection: if a trait is useful to the population, it will increase naturally.
2) Genetic Drift: if a population faces any accidents such that the majority of the population get killed, then the remaining ones can pass their genes to the next generation and increase the population of their traits.
3) Sexual Selection: some traits also increases in choosing a suitable partner for mating. if there is mating between male and female, their offspring will contain their traits and the population with that trait increases. So, sexual selection of partner plays a much more important role than we realize. for example, most of the creativity traits like music and art skills are the result of sexual selection.
The different ways in which individuals with a particular trait may increase in a population, are :
(i) By natural selection – Organisms with a particular trait may be naturally selected because it provided a survival advantage. That particular trait may thus increase in the population. It may direct evolution of species population by adaptations to fit their environment better.
(ii) Genetic drift & inheritance – An accident in small populations may result in surviving of organisms with a particular variant only. This can increase the frequency of some genes in that population, even if they give no survival advantage. This is the notion of genetic drift, which provides diversity without any adaptations.