Answer and Explanation:
Here is a comparison of natural selection, artificial selection, and sexual selection:
Natural Selection:
- Process where organisms adapt to their environment for survival
- Occurs in natural populations
- Slow process
- Helps in producing organisms with biological diversity
- Involves the inheritance of only favorable characters to successive generations
- Examples: Selection of long-necked giraffes, optimal clutch size in parental birds, disruptive selection
Artificial Selection:
- Selective breeding imposed by an external entity, usually humans, to enhance the frequency of desirable traits
- Occurs in reared or domestic populations
- Rapid process
- Helps in producing organisms with selected desirable traits
- Involves the inheritance of a variety of desired selected traits to successive generations
- Examples: Breeding of different varieties of dogs or cattle to produce desired varieties
Sexual Selection:
- A special kind of natural selection in which mating preferences influence the traits of the organism
- Acts on an organism's ability to obtain or successfully copulate with a mate
- Can produce features that are harmful to the individual's survival
- Examples: Elaborate tails in peacocks, fights over territories in elephant seals, fruit fly dances, male redback spiders flinging themselves into the jaws of death
- Can be driven by mate choice by both sexes.