LIFE SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -The interactions between individuals and their environment is what determines whether their genetic information will be passed on or not. This is why natural selection acts on phenotypes instead of genotypes. A phenotype is an organism’s physical traits, while a genotype is an organism’s genetic makeup.

Detailed explanation-2: -Natural selection acts on the phenotype, not the genotype. But it can cause changes in the genotype. The biggest headache in evolutionary biology is the word “fitness". That’s because it has a much different meaning in everyday speech than it does in biology.

Detailed explanation-3: -Phenotypes are a combination of genes and environmental influences. If the variation in the population is due to environmental influences alone, any advantage won’t be passed on to the next generation. So natural selection acts on phenotype, but it is the connection to genotype that makes it the mechanism of evolution.

Detailed explanation-4: -Natural selection occurs when individuals with certain genotypes are more likely than individuals with other genotypes to survive and reproduce, and thus to pass on their alleles to the next generation.

Detailed explanation-5: -Natural selection on single-gene traits can lead to changes in allele frequencies and, thus, to changes in phenotype frequencies. Natural selection on polygenic traits can affect the distributions of phenotypes in three ways: directional selection, stabilizing selection, or disruptive selection.