Question

Blue poppies native to China are grown at a plant-breeding center in California, where those with the thickest leaves survive and reproduce best in the drier climate. This evolutionary adaptation of the poppies to their new environment is due to _____. A) genetic driftB) stabilizing selectionC) diversifying selectionD) neutral variationE) directional selection

Answer 1

directional selection

Step-by-step explanation:

Selection is of three types -

1. diversifying

2. stabilizing

3. directional

These selections occur in a given environment to either increase, decrease or maintain the genetic variance of the population.

A type of natural selection in which the phenotype of the species of a given population tends to shift away from the mean and towards one extreme phenotype is known as directional selection.

In the given situation, it is given that the extreme phenotype of having thickest leaves is being favored in drier climate and hence, this is an example of directional selection.