What is the concept of survival of the fittest?

Answer 1

AnswerSurvival of the fittest, or Social Darwinism, refers to the characteristics of the fittest members of a species (in terms of their ability to survive in a given environment and produce offspring) will be passed on and become more common in the species. It does not refer to the fitness of individual organisms, precisely, but rather to the fitness of the species as a whole.

Charles Darwin defined natural selection as relating to the members of the species who were the most successful in survival skills (ie finding food, avoiding enemies, living to adulthood were the ones who had children and so propagated the species with their genes).

It should be noted that the Charles Darwin didn't use the term 'survival of the fittest', it was coined by biologist, sociologist, and author Herbert Spenser in his Principles of Biology published in 1864, five years after Darwin's On The Origin of Species. He used the term in his discussion of Darwin's book.

In the context of 'survival of the fittest', the word 'fittest' means best suited to its environment.

Answer 2

That concept of " the survival of the fittest " was coined by Herbert Spencer and is not quite accurate even though Darwin used the phrase in later editions of The Origin.

Darwin's theory is called the theory of evolution by natural selection and this is a simplified explanation of it.

Natural selection is the nonrandom survival and reproductive success of randomly varying organisms leading to allele changes in populations.

Answer 3

Survival of the fittest, or Social Darwinism, refers to the characteristics of the fittest members of a species (in terms of their ability to survive in a given environment and produce offspring) will be passed on and become more common in the species. It does not refer to the fitness of individual organisms, precisely, but rather to the fitness of the species as a whole.

Answer 4

Survival of the fittest means that the members of a species best fitted to their environment will be the most likely to survive than members poorly suited. Survival of the fittest applies to both plants and animals. A simple example is, a white rabbit would survive better than a brown one in the arctic because it would be harder for predators to find. A brown rabbit is more likely to survive in a grassland environment. Each species has traits that help them survive in the environment in which they live; the traits most successful in that environment will survive to pass those traits on to the next generation. As environments change over the centuries, the species most suited to the old environment must have adaptive traits or will eventually be replaced by species with traits that work better in the new environment.

This also means that as humans change more and more of the natural environment to suit the needs of humans, species that can't adjust to the environment of humans will not survive, which is why there are so many threatened and endangered species on earth.

Answer 5

It should be noted that it wasn't Darwin who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", and that biologists do not generally use the phrase, as it is an inaccurate description of natural selection.

Natural selection is the mechanism by which populations adapt to changing circumstances, or the mechanism that filters the genetic drift of populations to better fit existing circumstances.

Natural selection is the term used to describe the differential reproduction of variant alleles. Alleles that affect the reproductive capabilities of the organism that bears them positively will increase their frequency in the population gene pool. Alleles that affect their own reproduction negatively will decrease their frequency.

Answer 6

It means tht themost able and strong members of a species will survive

Answer 7

Individuals that are better suited to their environment-that is, with adaptions that enable fitness-survive and reproduce most successfully.