Artificial selection is about who gets to breed
- The idea
- Predict
- See it
- Why
- Check
The idea
“Any time people change an organism's genes on purpose, that's artificial selection.”
Breeding, adding genes and causing mutations are all ways people change a living thing on purpose. So they blur together.
The short version
The mistake: Any time people change an organism's genes on purpose, that's artificial selection.
What's actually true: Artificial selection is people choosing which individuals breed. Adding genes or causing mutations doesn't choose parents.
- In artificial selection, people choose which individuals reproduce based on a trait. Over generations, alleles for that trait get more common.
- Selection sorts variation already in a population. It creates no new alleles.
- Inserting a gene from another species is genetic engineering. Causing mutations or editing a base changes DNA too. None of these chooses parents.
On the exam: Ask who gets to breed. If people choose the parents, it's selection. Changing the DNA isn't.