Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the inherited characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins

Natural selection Evolution by means of natural selection is the process in which there is differential survival and reproduction of entities that differ one or more inherited trait within population. It also called a "self-evident" mechanism. Genetic drift It is a process where there are random changes to the proportion of two or more inherited trace within a population.

Biased mutation It can affect phenotype expressed multiple level of organization. Mutation, a driving force of evolution, is a random change in a population's gene pool. It is a change in the nature of the DNA in one or more chromosomes. Gene flow Gene flow is the exchange of genes between populations and between species .It can therefore be a source of variation that is new to a population or to a species.

Natural Selection
Evolution by means of natural selection is the process by which genetic mutations that enhance reproduction become and remain, more common in successive generations of a population. It has often been called a "selfevident" mechanism. It necessarily follows from three simple facts: Heritable variation exists within populations of organisms.

Organisms produce more progeny than can survive. These offspring vary in their ability to survive and reproduce.
Natural selection within a population for a trait can be categorized into three different types. A special case of natural selection is sexual selection, which is selection for any trait that increases mating success by increasing the attractiveness of an organism to potential mates .

Traits that evolved through sexual selection are particularly prominent in males of some animal species, despite traits such as cumbersome antlers, mating calls or bright colures that attract predators, decreasing the survival of individual males. This survival disadvantage is balanced by higher reproductive success in males that show these hard to fake sexually selected traits.

Natural selection most generally makes nature the measure against which individuals and individual traits , are more or less likely to survive.

"Nature" in this sense refers to an ecosystem , that is, a system in which organisms interact with every other element, physical as well as biological, in their local environment. Each population within an ecosystem occupies a distinct niche, or position, with distinct relationships to other parts of the system. These relationships involve the life history of the organism, its position in the food chain and its geographic range.

This broad understanding of nature enables scientists to delineate specific forces which, together, comprise natural selection. Natural selection can act at different levels of organisation, such as genes, cells, individual organisms, groups of organisms and species. Selection can act at multiple levels simultaneously. An example of selection occurring below the level of the individual organism are genes called transposons, which can replicate and spread throughout a genome.

Biased Mutation
It is a change in the nature of the DNA in one or more chromosomes. An organism's DNA affects how it looks, how it behaves, and its physiology all aspects of its life. So a change in an organism's DNA can cause changes in all aspects of its life.

Mutations give rise to new alleles; therefore, they are the source of variation in a population.

A heritable mutation changes one allele into another, sometimes creating an allele that is not already present in the population.
A mutation could cause parents with genes

for bright green coloration to have offspring

with a gene for brown coloration. That

would make the genes for brown beetles

more frequent in the population.

Example of Biased Mutation

GENETIC DRIFT
Along with natural selection, mutation, and migration genetic drift is one of the basic mechanisms of evolution . Genetic drift is the change in allele frequency from one generation to the next that occurs because alleles are subject to sampling error. The neutral theory of molecular evolution proposed that most evolutionary changes are the result of the fixation of neutral mutations by genetic drift.

Hence, in this model most genetic changes in a population are the result of constant mutation pressure and genetic drift. Genetic drift caused by the fact that some neutral genes are genetically linked to others that are under selection can be partially captured by an appropriate effective population size .

Gene Flow
Gene Flow is the input or output of genes due to individuals moving around. Is the movement of alleles into or out of a population (immigration or emigration). Gene flow can introduce new alleles into a gene pool or can change allele frequencies. The overall effect of gene flow is to counteract natural selection by creating less differences between populations.

Example: Plant pollen being blown into a new area