Chapter 3: Major Theories For Understanding Human Development: Evolution

Front 1

The Law of Natural Selection

Back 1

any inherited train that increases the number of offspring that an individual produces is automatically “selected for.”

Front 2

Fitness

Back 2

Fitness: The relative ability of an individual (or population) to survive, reproduce and propagate genes in an environment.

Front 3

Inclusive fitness:

Back 3

Inclusive fitness: the sum of an organism's classical fitness (how many of its own offspring it produces and supports) and the number of equivalents of its own offspring it can add to the population by supporting others. Inclusive fitness provides an evolutionary explanation for altruistic behavior among animal communities. Inclusive fitness takes into account close genetic relatives in the greater mission of passing on common genes, rather than just one individual organism's genes.

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Adaptation:

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refers to modification to meet changing circumstances.

Front 5

Extinction:

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the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species.

Front 6

Ecological Niche:

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The ecological niche describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (e.g., by growing when resources are abundant, and when predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce) and how it in turn alters those same factors (e.g., limiting access to resources by other organisms, acting as a food source for predators and a consumer of prey).

Front 7

Speciation:

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the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.

Front 8

Ethology: the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology.

Back 8

the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology.