Chat with our AI personalities
The three patterns of natural selection are directional selection, stabilizing selection, and disruptive selection. Directional selection favors individuals at one extreme of a trait distribution, stabilizing selection favors the intermediate phenotype, and disruptive selection favors individuals at both extremes of a trait distribution.
Directional selection favors individuals with extreme phenotypes, leading to a shift in the population's characteristics over time. Stabilizing selection favors intermediate phenotypes, reducing variation within the population. Directional selection tends to decrease diversity by favoring extreme phenotypes, while stabilizing selection tends to maintain diversity by favoring intermediate phenotypes.
Industrial melanism is an example of directional selection, not stabilizing selection. In this phenomenon, environmental changes such as pollution cause a shift in the frequency of dark-colored individuals within a population, which increases their survival rates due to camouflage. Stabilizing selection, on the other hand, favors the intermediate phenotype, reducing the variation in a population.
Stabilizing selection favors the average phenotype and reduces genetic diversity by selecting against extreme traits. Directional selection favors individuals at one extreme of the phenotypic range, leading to a shift in the population's average phenotype. Disruptive selection favors individuals at both extremes of the phenotypic range, increasing genetic diversity within the population.
Stabilizing selection is the type of natural selection that acts against extreme forms of a polygenic trait to reduce genetic variation and maintains the average value of the trait within a population. It favors the intermediate phenotype, leading to a narrowing of the range of variation for that trait over time.