3.1 Fitness
When I think of the term "fitness" I often also think of the term "natural selection". To me, when organisms of specific population have a good fitness, that means that they have a desirable attribute to their population and often they reproduce successfully and with many of their kind. For example, if there we two color of the same bug but one of the colors attracted predators more than the other, then the bug with the color that is less noticeable will have better fitness. This is due to the fact that there will be more of that color of bugs to reproduce successfully. Natural selection also ties into fitness in that if an organism is naturally selected to pass on its genes, then it also has good fitness.
Some ideas that could be used to measure the fitness of these bugs include...
1. Rate of reproduction per color
2. What are the phenotypes of the new offspring
3. The life span of each color of bug
The rate of reproduction directly reflects the fitness of the two variants of this species. Thats why this method is probably the best when considering how to measure fitness. Analyzing the phenotypes of the new offspring could be a great way to see how the genotypes might adjust based off of the rate of reproduction and the species own evolution to increase its survival rate. And lastly, I thought it would be a good idea to also track the life span of each color of bug since the ones that live longer will most likely be the ones to reproduce more and successfully.
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I did a lot of reading to understand the similarities and differences of fitness and natural selection. Your example of predators picking off specific color of bugs is a great example. The life span of each color of bug is something I completely overlooked.. But it makes since, just because an organism is able to produce a large amount of offspring does not mean those offspring will make it to mature life stage.
ReplyDeleteHi Amy!
ReplyDeleteI also associate natural selection with fitness. The more fit an organism is, the higher chance it has to live a long life and successfully reproduce. Also, natural selection weeds out the unfit or less fit organisms and makes the most fit organisms more successful. I like your example about the bugs and how one attracts predictors more frequently so it is more of a target. It is less fit than other organisms of its kind without even doing anything wrong.