Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misconceptions

By T. Gregory. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2009

523 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Natural selection is one of the central mechanisms of evolutionary change and is the process responsible for the evolution of adaptive features. Without a working knowledge of natural selection, it is impossible to understand how or why living things have come to exhibit their diversity and complexity. An understanding of natural selection also is becoming increasingly relevant in practical contexts, including medicine, agriculture, and resource management. Unfortunately, studies indicate that natural selection is generally very poorly understood, even among many individuals with postsecondary biological education. This paper provides an overview of the basic process of natural selection, discusses the extent and possible causes of misunderstandings of the process, and presents a review of the most common misconceptions that must be corrected before a functional understanding of natural selection and adaptive evolution can be achieved.

Subfields: Genetics, History and Philosophy of Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07af2b66a029c28ac30aa3a8cb744b6f978ea2df

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In Genetics

1. C. S. Bhunjun
2. K. D. Hyde
3. Itthayakorn Promputtha

Citations in the corpus

• What are fungal species and how to delineate them? (2021, background): “This genetic variation first originates from random processes, such as point mutations or genetic recombination (Gregory 2009).”