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Fitness (often denoted or ω in population genetics models) is a quantitative representation of individual reproductive success. It is also equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation, made by the same individuals of the specified genotype or phenotype. Fitness can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to ...
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". " Survival of the fittest " [1] is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, the phrase is best understood as ...
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is ...
Evolutionary game theory analyses Darwinian mechanisms with a system model with three main components – population, game, and replicator dynamics. The system process has four phases: 1) The model (as evolution itself) deals with a population (Pn). The population will exhibit variation among competing individuals.
Evolutionary physiology is the study of the biological evolution of physiological structures and processes; that is, the manner in which the functional characteristics of organisms have responded to natural selection or sexual selection or changed by random genetic drift across multiple generations during the history of a population or species. [2]
An evolutionary tradeoff is a situation in which evolution cannot advance one part of a biological system without distressing another part of it. In biology, and more specifically in evolutionary biology, tradeoffs refer to the process through which a trait increases in fitness at the expense of decreased fitness in another trait.
The following definitions are given by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: 1. Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. 2. Adaptedness is the state of being adapted: the degree to which an organism is able to live and reproduce in a given set of habitats.
v. t. e. In evolutionary biology, fitness landscapes or adaptive landscapes (types of evolutionary landscapes) are used to visualize the relationship between genotypes and reproductive success. It is assumed that every genotype has a well-defined replication rate (often referred to as fitness ). This fitness is the "height" of the landscape.