Types of Selection & Their Effects
- Environmental factors that affect the chance of survival of an organism are referred to as selection pressures
- For example, there could be high levels of competition for food between lions if there is not plentiful prey available; this environmental factor ‘selects’ for faster, more powerful lions that are better hunters
- These selection pressures can have different effects on the allele frequencies of a population through natural selection
- There are three types of selection:
- Stabilising selection
- Disruptive selection
- Directional selection
Stabilising selection
- Stabilising selection is natural selection that keeps allele frequencies relatively constant over generations
- This means things stay as they are unless there is a change in the environment
- A classic example of stabilising selection can be seen in human birth weights
- Very-low and very-high birth weights are selected against leading to the maintenance of the intermediate birth weights
Stabilising selection on human birth weight
Directional selection
- Directional selection is natural selection that produces a gradual change in allele frequencies over several generations
- This usually happens when there is a change in environment / selection pressures or a new allele has appeared in the population that is advantageous
- For example: A recent finding has shown that climate change is having an effect on fish size in certain habitats
- The increase in temperature is selecting for a smaller body size and against a larger body size
- Warmer seas cause fish metabolism to speed up and so increases their need for oxygen; oxygen levels are lower in warmer seas
- Larger fish have greater metabolic needs than smaller fish, and so they feel the effect of increased temperatures more strongly
- Organisms are sensitive to changes in temperature primarily because of the effect that temperature can have on enzyme activity
- Fish with a smaller body size are therefore fitter and better adapted to living in seas experiencing increased temperatures
- Fish body size is determined by both genetic and environmental factors
- Fish of a smaller size are more likely to reproduce and pass on their alleles to offspring
- Over generations, this leads to an increase in the frequency of alleles that produce a small body size and a decrease in the frequency of alleles that produce a larger body size
Directional selection acting on fish body size
Disruptive selection
- Disruptive selection is natural selection that maintains high frequencies of two different sets of alleles
- In other words, individuals with intermediate phenotypes or alleles are selected against
- Disruptive selection causes polymorphism: the continued existence of two or more distinct phenotypes in species
- This can occur in an environment that shows variation
- For example, birds that live on the Galapagos Islands use their beaks to forage for different sized seeds
- The size of the bird's beaks are either small or large with the intermediate medium-sized beak selected against
- The reason for this is that the different types of seed available are more efficiently foraged by a shorter or longer beak
Disruptive selection acting on beak size in a bird population
Examiner Tip
Become familiar with the shapes of the graphs above. They can help you answer questions about the type of selection that is occurring in a population. For example, you may be given a graph like one of those above and be asked to identify the type of selection that is occurring. Alternatively, an exam question could contain a description of the phenotypes in a population, including the relative frequencies of these phenotypes and how these are changing over time. From this, you should be able to identify the type of selection occurring.