Asked by jonothan

A population contains short plants and tall plants. The short plants are not able to compete with tall plants for sunlight. The tall plants, however, are more susceptible to wind damage. Which type of selection will this population of plants most likely experience?
directional selection
disruptive selection
species selection
stabilizing selection

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Stabilizing selection.

Both extremes are disadvantaged (short plants lose out on light; tall plants suffer wind damage), so selection favors intermediate-height plants and reduces variation around the mean.