BRAINCAKEReproductive Success
Natural selection does not simply reward survival. What matters in evolution is reproductive success: the number of offspring an individual produces that survive to reproduce themselves. An organism that lives a long time but never breeds contributes no alleles to the next generation.
This is why biologists describe fitness as an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its environment, passing its alleles on. An allele increases in frequency in a population only if individuals carrying it leave, on average, more surviving offspring than individuals without it.
Reproductive success depends on several things:
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All 29 lessons in Natural Selection · All Edexcel AS-level Biology topics