Final answer:
Natural selection for a population of flowers involves variation, selection pressure, advantageous traits, reproduction, heritability, and repetition.
Step-by-step explanation:
Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution that leads to the adaptation of organisms to their environment over time. In the case of a population of flowers, the steps involved in natural selection can be described as follows:
- Variation: There is genetic variation in the population, which means that individuals have different traits, such as flower color.
- Selection pressure: Bees show a preference for red flowers, leading to a higher rate of pollination on red flowers compared to blue flowers.
- Advantageous traits: Red flowers have a higher chance of reproducing and passing on their genes to the next generation, while blue flowers have a lower chance of reproducing.
- Reproduction: Red flowers produce more offspring than blue flowers because they are favored by bees.
- Heritability: The offspring of red flowers inherit the trait for red flower color, leading to an increase in the frequency of red flower alleles in the population over time.
- Repeat: The process continues in subsequent generations, with red flowers becoming more dominant in the population.