Why are variations important to understanding change in a population over time?
1 Answer
An interesting question! Let me try to write an answer for this one. :)
Explanation:
We must revisit some of the fundamental biological ideas while understanding this.
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There are variations in natural population gene pool of an organism. Some of the variations may provide an advantage to the organism to lead a successful life while other variations may not provide such adaptive advantage.
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Variations are inherited, as these are genetically controlled. Hence a better adapted organism would transfer the favourable variation to its offspring; longer survival means more number of progeny. As a result each new generation of organisms would have the favourable variations in an increased proportion.
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Change in allele frequency within a gene pool over a time period is defined as microevolution. As we say that favourable variations in the gene pool would become more numerous with time, obviously alleles controlling such characteristics would increase in percentage in each generation.
So we may conclude that favourable variations are evolutionarily important and frequency of alleles controlling such variations would gradually increase in population, through many generations.
