Question

1. What is microevolution?

2. Explain through the process of microevolution how natural selection produces adaptations while other evolutionary forces (specifically genetic drift, migration/gene flow, and non-random mating) may produce random evolutionary changes within populations.

3. Explain why evolution is a population-level phenomenon. Why does population size affect some evolutionary mechanisms, but not other(s)?

Will give a thumbs up for a good answer. Please help me!

Answer 1

1. Consider any population, if we observe any difference in the allele frequency in that population, then we can say that microevolution has occured in that population. Microevolution will create alteration in allele fequency. Several bacterias gain resistance (towards antibodies) , is an example for microevolution.

2. Natural selection helps in the development of better characterists with in a population, by avoiding individuals with less survival skills. Some species will undergo some adaptation during natural selection. [ Consider an example, white beetles are mainly eaten by birds than brown beetles, because they are easily visible to birds, this caused adaptation in white colored beetles, they changed to brown, to escape from predation]. Natural selection helps the organisms to get adapted to changing environmental conditions. Genetic drift, migration, non random mating can cause random evolutionary changes in a population, because there is a chance of DNA copying error or sampling error, these will make changes in organism, and it will be passed to it next generation, result in evolution.

3.Evolution occurs at population level because, in a particular environmental condition some individuals survive and reproduce in a better manner, where as some other cannot even survive, the individual who survived transfer their characters to it's offsprings and so on. Population size affect evolutionary mechanism, the reason is genetic drift. If the population is very small there will be changes faster than, larger population.