Variability within a population

This is more or less the same as polymorphism in a population or, simply, heterogeneity. The members of a single species (to be exact, it should be added – of the same sex and age) differ from one another in external appearance and internal traits. If we simplify this a bit, we can state that the different effects of the environment, for example, different nutrition, are responsible for some differences (and these differences are not transferred to offspring), while other differences lie in the genotypes of the individual organisms (and these differences are inherited from their parents by descendants).

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The classical Darwinian theory of evolution can explain the evolution of adaptive traits only in asexual organisms. The frozen plasticity theory is much more general: It can also explain the origin and evolution of adaptive traits in both asexual and sexual organisms Read more