• Question: when does variation become adaptation ,adaptation become evolution and evolution become species spliting ?

    Asked by nikhilbhatt to Claire, Renata, Suzanne on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Suzanne Harvey

      Suzanne Harvey answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      An adaptation is something an individual has, whereas evolution is the process of change in the whole population. So as an example, if we’re talking about the big teeth that baboons have, the adaptation is an individual’s big teeth. They give a baboon an advantage in terms of fighting and feeding. The evolution of big teeth would be the way that over time, more and more baboons have big teeth because the advantage they give is selected for through evolution – those with big teeth live longer and reproduce more than those with small teeth, so they produce offspring with big teeth.

      The most common way for species to split is by a population being separated physically. If some of a group are on one island and some on another, over many generations they will evolve differently, and will be classed as another species when they’re so different that they can’t breed together any more.

      Like an adaptation, species splitting is key to evolution, which just the name given to the whole process.

      Hope that helps!

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