Stay Curious

SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AND UNLOCK ONE MORE ARTICLE FOR FREE.

Sign Up

VIEW OUR Privacy Policy


Discover Magazine Logo

WANT MORE? KEEP READING FOR AS LOW AS $1.99!

Subscribe

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

FIND MY SUBSCRIPTION
Advertisement

Evolution in less than 10 words - give it a shot!

Explore how differential fitness correlated with heritable variation shapes evolution and debunks popular misconceptions about evolution.

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

Bora's reference to popular misconceptions about evolution and RPM's post which points to some of Francis Collins' bizarre contentions in regards to human evolution (talk about "End of History") got me thinking, how about I be a unifier and not a divider? If you had 10 words or less, what would you have the public master (and I mean internalize, not spit back as a creed) about evolutionary theory? Here is my shot: Differential fitness correlated with heritable variation results in evolution This an attempt to condense Richard Lewontin's "three conditions" for biological evolution: (i) there must be phenotypic variation (ii) the different phenotypic variants must be associated with different fitnesses (iii) fitness must be heritable Of course, this arguably neglects the important area of molecular evolution, where one could argue that neutral fitness dominates the scene and so evolution is driven by entirely different principles. Well, one step at ...

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe
Advertisement

0 Free Articles