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A museum exhibit shows how antibiotic resistance in bacteria demonstrates evolution in action. Bacteria that survive antibiotic treatment reproduce and pass resistance genes to their offspring. What evolutionary principle does antibiotic resistance illustrate?
Question 9 options:

Antibiotic resistance proves that evolution has no practical relevance to human health

Natural selection favors genetic variants that provide survival advantages in specific environments

Antibiotic resistance shows that evolution only happens in laboratory settings

Bacteria consciously choose to develop resistance when exposed to antibiotics

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Natural selection favors genetic variants that provide survival advantages in specific environments.

Explanation: Some bacteria have heritable genetic variants that confer resistance; when antibiotics kill susceptible bacteria, resistant ones survive and reproduce, increasing the frequency of resistance alleles. The other options are incorrect because resistance is relevant to health, is not a conscious choice by bacteria, and occurs in nature as well as labs.