Natural Selection¶
Switch between temperate, arctic and tropical climates to see how selection pressure changes survival, reproduction and allele frequency in a population with thick-furred and thin-furred variants.
The pale green dots represent food. In the model, individuals that gather enough food are more likely to survive and reproduce, so the important pattern to watch is the change across the population rather than one organism on its own.
What This Simulation Does Not Show¶
- Real natural selection acts on whole organisms in real habitats, not just on a single fur trait.
- New alleles do not appear because the climate changes. Mutation is random, and selection changes how common existing variants become.
- Evolution is usually slower and affected by many selection pressures at the same time, including predation, competition and disease.