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Two useful introductions to the fundamental theory underlying the unit of selection issue and debate, which also present examples of multi-level selection from the entire range of the biological hierarchy (typically with entities at level N-1 competing for increased representation, i.e., higher frequency, at the immediately higher level N, e.g., organisms in populations or cell lineages in ...
In negative frequency-dependent selection, the fitness of a phenotype or genotype decreases as it becomes more common. This is an example of balancing selection. More generally, frequency-dependent selection includes when biological interactions make an individual's fitness depend on the frequencies of other phenotypes or genotypes in the ...
The theorem was first formulated in Fisher's 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. [4] Fisher likened it to the law of entropy in physics, stating that "It is not a little instructive that so similar a law should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences".
Fisher's principle is an evolutionary model that explains why the sex ratio of most species that produce offspring through sexual reproduction is approximately 1:1 between males and females. A. W. F. Edwards has remarked that it is "probably the most celebrated argument in evolutionary biology". [1]
He wrote out his ideas in an 1842 "pencil sketch", then in an essay written in 1844. He discussed transmutation with his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, [1] who read the essay in 1847. After turning his attention to biology and completing eight years of work on barnacles, Darwin intensified work on his theory of species in 1854.
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
The underlying theme of the essay is the need to teach biological evolution in the context of debate about creation and evolution in public education in the United States. [5] The fact that evolution occurs explains the interrelatedness of the various facts of biology, and so makes biology make sense. [6]
The frequency = + of normal alleles A increases at rate / due to the selective elimination of recessive homozygotes, while mutation causes to decrease at rate (ignoring back mutations). Mutation–selection balance then gives p B B = μ / s {\displaystyle p_{BB}=\mu /s} , and so the frequency of deleterious alleles is q = μ / s {\displaystyle ...