Question

How does evolution explain (a) adaptive traits, (b) the great diversity of species, and (c) the many examples in which dissimilar organisms share certain characteristics?

Answer 1

Adaptive trait is a genetic trait that helps an organism to maximize its reproductive success. For example, in hummingbirds, a long bill can be an adaptive trait since it is both heritable and adaptive.

Natural selection only acts on the population's heritable traits, selecting for beneficial alleles and thus increasing their frequency in the population ,while selecting against deleterious alleles and thereby, decreasing their frequency. This process is known as adaptive evolution.In evolutionary theory, adaptation is the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment.The idea of natural selection is that traits that can be passed down allow organisms to adapt to the environment better than other organisms of the same species.

An example of adaptive evolution is the horse's teeth. Its teeth are one of the traits that made it fit for a grass diet. In contrast, genetic drift produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Evolution that arises from genetic drift is called neutral evolution.

Evolution is a process that allows species to become differentiated.The changes that are useful will be passed on to future generations and may eventually lead to the rise of new species. It is in this way that evolution helps to explain the diversity of life. The process of evolution allows new species to arise.Evolution and diversity result from the interactions between organisms and their environments and the consequences of these interactions over long periods of time. Organisms continually adapt to their environments, and the diversity of environments that exists promotes a diversity of organisms adapted to them

When a species is separated into populations that are prevented from interbreeding, mutations, genetic drift, and the selection of novel traits cause the accumulation of differences over generations and the emergence of new species.The importance of adaptive traits is it make the species to survive the changed surroundings. natural selection serves to favor the adaptive traits and gradually leads to evolution of new better adapted species.

Dissimal organisms share the following characteristics:

Responsiveness to the environment, growth and change ,ability to reproduce, have a metabolism and breathe, maintain homeostasis, being made of cells and passing traits onto offspring.All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. When viewed together, these characteristics serve to define life.

When reproduction occurs, genes containing DNA are passed along to an organism's offspring. These genes ensure that the offspring will belong to the same species and will have similar characteristics, such as size and shape.