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Gullett-Biology-Unit
Biology Unit 3 - Natural Selection
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| artificial selection | the human practice of breeding animals or plants that have certain desired traits |
| heritability | ability of a trait to be passed from one generation to the next |
| natural selection | the process by which individuals that are better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce more successfully than less well adapted individuals do; a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution |
| fitness | a measure of an organism's ability to survive and reproduce offspring relative to members of a population |
| gene pool | the total set of genes, including all the alleles, that are present in a population at any one point in time |
| allele frequency | proportion of one allele, compared with all the alleles for that trait, in the gene pool |
| normal distribution | a distribution of numerical data whose graph forms a bell-shaped curve that is symmetrical about the mean |
| directional selection | a natural selection process in which one genetic variation is selected and that causes a change in the overall genetic composition of a population |
| stabilizing selection | a type of natural selection in which the average form of a trait is favored and becomes more common |
| disruptive selection | a type of natural selection in which two extreme forms of a trait are selected |
| population | a group of organisms of the same species that live in a specific geographic area |