Conditions for Evolution by Natural Selection

Abstract

Standard verbal formulations of necessary and sufficient conditions for evolution by natural selection require variation, heritability, and differential reproduction. These formulations are ambiguous with respect to their role and subject to counterexamples. Problem cases reveal tensions and tradeoffs within standard practices of description within evolutionary biology. In some respects, the verbal summaries must be seen as approximations of more exact treatments. In some other ways, they embody idealizations. However, in yet other respects the verbal summaries can function to express elements of evolutionary theory that are hard to capture in other ways.

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