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The Process of Natural Selection as a Mechanism for Evolutionary Change

and its Relationship to the Production and Loss of Genetic Information
Josh Landon
Bio 111 IN4
South Piedmont Community College
December 12, 2013
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Abstract
Natural selection is a necessary and possibly the most important mechanism of evolutionary
change. It can cause, even apart from other forces of evolution, important changes in
populations. Without the process of natural selection, evolution becomes a largely inexplicable
account of the diversity of life. However, natural selection itself cannot account for the
generation of new genetic information. It certainly manipulates existing genetic information, but
it does not create it. This is not necessarily a problem for the modern evolutionary synthesis
because other mechanism involved in evolutionary change may account for the actual advances
in complexity and organization of genetic information.



















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The Process of Natural Selection as a Mechanism for Evolutionary Change
and its Relationship to the Production and Loss of Genetic Information
Introduction
Much research and thought has gone into the subject of natural selection as a mechanism
of evolutionary change. Much work still needs to be done in order to adequately grasp this most
fascinating of concepts. This paper does not really add anything new to the discussion but
merely attempts to succinctly state an observation about the role natural selection plays in
evolutionary change that has already received moderate attention in both the scholarly world and
the world of lay-scientist.
The question under discussion is whether the process of natural selection has the capacity
to produce new genetic information. Closely related to this question is the equally intriguing
question of the parameters of natural selections role in evolutionary progress. What role can
natural selection play in macroevolution? What role does evolution need natural selection to
play? The role of natural selection in evolution and its relationship to the generation and lose of
genetic information is the subject of this brief paper.
Before dealing directly with these questions, some brief background information is in
order. Then, after attempting to answer the question, a brief discussion of the implications of the
answer on the modern evolutionary synthesis and the stability of the hypothesis as an adequate
explanation for the observed diversity of life will conclude the paper.
The Basic Concept of Natural Selection
can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly
survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best
chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any
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variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable
individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have
called natural selection, or the survival of the fittest (Darwin, 1971, p. 81).
This is the beginning of one of the most influential passages on natural selection ever
written. Charles Darwin did not come up with the idea that creatures more adapted to their
environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. That much was obvious to everyone for
centuries, perhaps even millennia, before Darwin showed up. Nor can he be credited with first
suggesting that this effected the population (Russell et al., 2008, p. 401-402).
However, his carefully reasoned argument that natural selection could play such an
enormous role in an account of the origin of all life was a rather startling and ingenious
connection at a time when many scientists thought of species as relatively stable and unchanging.
Darwin used the idea of natural selection as the mechanism by which he thought all life forms
could evolve from one common ancestor (Russell et al., 2008, p. 402, 410).
The basic idea is that, in any given population, some species will be more adapted to their
environment than others. Adaption is simply a measurement of the ease with which an organism
is able to (or likely to) survive and reproduce in its environment. A highly adapted individual is
highly likely to survive and reproduce. The individuals in a population most adapted are the
fittest. Normally, the most adapted individuals will reproduce the most, which means that each
successive generation is more adapted to the same environment (Lewis et el., 2004, p. 277;
Livnat, 2013, p. 4).
However, Darwin supposed that environments do not remain the same. They change, and
the organisms within them must change with them or die. The traits that made an individual
highly adapted to yesterdays environment may turn out to be detrimental to its survival and
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ability to reproduce in todays environment. When that happens, the individuals with the less
adapted traits will die out and the individuals with traits adapted to the new environment will
begin to dominate the population. If none of the individuals in a population have the traits
necessary to survive and reproduce in the new environment, the whole population dies out
(Lewis et el., 2004, p. 277, 313-316; Frank, December 2012, p. 2378).
Darwins original conception of natural selection as a mechanism of evolutionary change
has undergone a great deal of change over the years. By the turn of the nineteenth century,
Darwinism had been synced with Mendelism and the next three decades saw the outworking of
natural selection as a genetic phenomenon. Around the middle of the twentieth century, studies
in many different fields of science came together to form the modern evolutionary synthesis.
Mathematics, morphology, various microbiological fields, and taxonomy formed a somewhat
unified picture of the origin and change of life from a neo-Darwinian perspective (Russell et al.,
2008, p. 411-412).
The Necessity of Natural Selection to Evolution
There are many evolutionary forces. Natural selection is specifically the conception
of fitter species and traits surviving and reproducing. It is difficult to imagine evolution without
natural selection. It was originally thought of as the primary mechanism of evolution and is still
conceived of as the dominant driving force of change in the modern evolutionary synthesis
(Russell et al., 2008, p. 407, 411; Wilson, 1999, p. 75).
Natural selection may be thought of as molding or guiding evolution. It does this in
several ways. Directional selection is when the environment drives one allele out of dominance
in a population. Disruptive selection selects for the two extreme expressions of a trait.
Stabilizing selection is when the extremes are less adaptive and intermediate phenotypes work
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better (Lewis et al., 2004, p. 292-293; Russell et al., 2008, p. 430-433). There would be no
theory of evolution without natural selection. It is a necessary process of change for the
synthesis (Frank, February 2012, p. 228).
Natural Selection does not Generate New Genetic Material
Evolution is an explanation of how the many different organisms observed today have
descended from a common ancestor. Typically, this common ancestor is supposed to be
genetically simple compared to many of the organisms seen today. Assuming the relative
simplicity of the original organism from which all others have arisen, evolution is taken as an
account of how more complex species have evolved from simpler ones.
This being the case, natural selection is one part of the proposed explanation of how this
might have happened. If a population retains, within its individual members, the genetic
information for traits A, B, and C, then a change in the environment that selects for trait C
would, according to natural selection, kill off individuals with the alleles for traits A and B. If
this happens, the population has changed. It went from having the genetic information for all
three genes to having the genetic information for trait C alone. The population has lost genetic
information, not generated new information.
It seems evident that natural selection is a real process that effects changes in
populations. However, the change rendered by natural selection does not, by itself, add new
genetic material to the populations gene pool (Lewis et al., 2004, p. 292). In fact, it generally
destroys information and reduces genetic variability. The product of natural selection is a loss of
genetic information, not a gain. The process of natural selection cannot generate new genetic
information (Starr & Taggart, 2004, p. 278).
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This explains why many discussions of evolutionary change by natural selection actually
begin with the origin of variation by mutation and not the actual process of natural selection
(Wilson, 1999, p. 76). The micro-biological process of natural selection is only part of the story
of evolution (Starr & Taggart, 2004, p. 281). It cannot actually explain how the genetic
information arose from simpler codes, only how it is dispersed once it already exists.
Implications and Conclusion
As has already been noted, natural selection is but one of several important forces or
mechanisms of evolutionary change. Natural selection may still be a valid and necessary part of
evolution. It may play its role well. Evolution is probably impossible without it. However, it is
but one part of the puzzle. By itself, it cannot account for the diversity of life from one single
ancestor because it has no capacity to generate new genetic information.
To survive, evolution must be able to account for the generation of new genetic
information. Natural selection cannot do this. However, this does not mean there is something
wrong with evolution in general, nor specifically the modern synthesis. Drawing the parameters
of the function of natural selection in this way does not have to create a problem for the concept
of all life evolving from a simple ancestor. It simply means that the other mechanisms of
evolution must be able to account for the generation of new genetic information, and natural
selection must be left to deal with the weeding out of unhelpful alleles from populations.





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References
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