What are the factors that lead to evolution ?
↵Dear Student,
The factors that lead to evolution are natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation.
The factors that lead to evolution are natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation.
- Natural selection leads to evolution by selecting beneficial variations. That is variations which are beneficial for the population and help in the better survival of the population are naturally selected. Accumulation of many such variations results in the development of new species. Therefore, natural selection is the cause of evolution.
- Genetic drift refers to the variations in gene frequencies within a small population by chance rather than by natural selection. In a small population, genetic drift can lead to the extinction of the population or result in the population becoming even better adapted to the environment or more widely divergent from the parental For example, if an allele has a frequency of 1% in a population of 100 only one individual would possess that allele so the probability of losing that allele by chance is much greater. Similarly, it can also drift to a higher frequency by chance.
- Mutation: These are the sudden changes that take place in the DNA sequence of an organism. These are the permanent changes that can be either induced or occur naturally leading to the variation in the populations.