Asked by gguttd

Explain the relationship between the environment, variation, and selection.

Changing
can cause certain traits to be favored through
. This can lead to changes in
.

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Changing the environment can cause certain traits to be favored through natural selection. This can lead to changes in allele frequencies (and therefore the population’s characteristics) over generations.

Brief explanation: Individuals vary genetically and phenotypically. When the environment changes, some variants confer higher survival or reproductive success under the new conditions. Natural selection therefore increases the frequency of those beneficial variants, producing evolutionary change in the population. Example: industrial soot darkening tree bark favored dark moths (peppered moth) — allele frequencies shifted so dark forms became more common.