Evolution Standards Overview I The process of natural selection begins with a specific individual of a species. That individual has a unique advantage that helps it run faster to avoid predators, this allowing it to survive easier. Then, when that individual mates, it passes on the fast gene to it’s child(ren), so, as the slower individuals of it’s species die off, the gene for faster running becomes more prominent or abundant. Then, once a good number of the slower part of it’s species die off, that species is now a faster species than before. This process can occur over any period of time from a thousand to ten million years. Natural Selection (or survival of the fittest, as Darwin called it), can take many different forms in nature. For one species, it may be an ability to run fast, whereas for another species, it may be behavioral tactics that it uses to outsmart predators. For the porcupine (my example), sharp quills make a powerful, hungry predator (such as a lion or lioness) back away from an attack. Natural Selection affects the characteristic of an organism by helping it’s survival and the survival of it’s species. So, normally, natural selection affects organisms and species in a positive way, because if it was negative, that individual organism would die off, leaving no offspring to pass the trait onto. A mutation is formed when there is a mess up in the copying or transferring of DNA and RNA. A mutation can be maintained within a gene pool if the mutation is minimal, or small. So if it is a small mutation that can stay within a gene pool, which then creates a new species if it lasts long enough. II 1. Variation basically means an organism or plant that’s showing off a lot of difference or variation from others of it’s species. A Species is a group of similar organism that can breed and produce fertile offspring. A giraffe is a great example of how variation has allowed it’s species to survive and produce more...