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In biology, the question of the individual is related to the definition of an organism, which is an important question in biology and the philosophy of biology, despite there having been little work devoted explicitly to this question. [3] An individual organism is not the only kind of individual that is considered as a "unit of selection". [3]
A colonial organism such as a siphonophore is a being which functions as an individual but is composed of communicating individuals. [8] A superorganism is a colony, such as of ants , consisting of many individuals working together as a single functional or social unit .
Biology is the scientific study of life. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] For instance, all organisms are composed of at least one cell that processes hereditary information encoded in genes , which can be transmitted ...
An example of random variation in Drosophila flies is the number of ommatidia, which may vary (randomly) between left and right eyes in a single individual as much as they do between different genotypes overall, or between clones raised in different environments. [citation needed]
The small plant in front is about 1 cm (0.4 in) tall. The concept of "individual" is obviously stretched by this asexual reproductive process. Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents
A karyotype is the general appearance of the complete set of chromosomes in the cells of a species or in an individual organism, mainly including their sizes, numbers, and shapes. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Karyotyping is the process by which a karyotype is discerned by determining the chromosome complement of an individual, including the number of ...
Fitness is often defined as a propensity or probability, rather than the actual number of offspring. For example, according to Maynard Smith, "Fitness is a property, not of an individual, but of a class of individuals—for example homozygous for allele A at a particular locus.
Individual organisms participating in a biological life cycle ordinarily age and die, while cells from these organisms that connect successive life cycle generations (germ line cells and their descendants) are potentially immortal. The basis for this difference is a fundamental problem in biology.