Fitness consists of the ability a living organism has to adapt and survive to its environment, as well as reproducing and leaving its gene in the next generations. This can be measure by quantitating the percentage of a genotype in a gene pool or the offspring of a species.
An example of fitness is how insects can camouflage within foliage in order to escape predators. In the following image, brown beetles have a higher gene percentage than green beetles within a gene pool, being the fittest genotype. As the brown beetles continue to reproduce, this percentage will increase, as well as its fitness.
References:
Nature news. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2021, from
https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/the_meaning_of_fitness/
What about fitness? (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_27
I think that an organism's ability to blend in to their environment to avoid predators is a great way to show fitness! In my example I used coat color of mice, but the beetle color example is also one I am familiar with! However, how do you think the fitness would change if the beetle's environment changed? Would the other color beetle have a better chance at survival?
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