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Aug 3

What about fitness?

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What about fitness?

Biologists use the word fitness todescribe how good a particular genotype isat leaving offspring in the next generation relative to how goodother genotypes are at it. So if brown beetles consistently leavemore offspring than green beetles because of their color, you'd saythat the brown beetles had a higher fitness.

Of course, fitness is a relative thing. A genotype's fitness depends on theenvironment in which the organism lives. The fittest genotype during an iceage, for example, is probably not the fittest genotype once the ice age isover.

Fitness is a handy concept because it lumps everything that mattersto natural selection (survival, mate-finding, reproduction) into one idea.The fittest individual is not necessarily the strongest, fastest,or biggest. A genotype's fitness includes its ability to survive,find a mate, produce offspring and ultimately leaveits genes in the next generation.

It might be tempting to think of natural selection acting exclusivelyon survival ability but, as the concept of fitness shows, that'sonly half the story. When natural selection acts on mate-findingand reproductive behavior, biologists call it sexual selection.

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What about fitness?

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