What is artificial selection?
Q: What is artificial selection?
A: Artificial selection is the intentional breeding of plants or animals, which is also known as selective breeding. It is an ancient method of genetic engineering.
Q: How does selective breeding work?
A: Selective breeding involves choosing animals with desirable traits to breed and passing those traits on to the next generation. Inbreeding is a particular type of selective breeding that produces a population that is genetically almost identical.
Q: What happens when inbred populations are taken outside the laboratory?
A: When inbred populations are taken outside the laboratory, they lose fertility and must be outcrossed or backcrossed to wild-type individuals or less inbred stock in order to maintain their viability. This improvement when outcrossing occurs is called hybrid vigour.
Q: How did Charles Darwin use artificial selection?
A: Charles Darwin used artificial selection as an example to introduce his idea of natural selection. He used it as a contrast between artificial and natural processes for selecting organisms with certain traits for better survival and reproduction.
Q: Is artificial selection always intentional?
A: No, sometimes it can be unintentional; it's thought that early humans domesticated crops without intentionally doing so.
Q: What happens during natural selection?
A: During natural selection, some variations help organisms have better survival and reproduction, resulting in differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits within a population which maintains or enhances its fitness within its natural habitat.
