Natural Selection

Natural Selection

I feel like most people have heard of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest". Although the popular phrase has given great attention to an important evolutionary phenomenon, it has also lead to many misunderstandings as to  what the ideas of survival, evolution, and fitness really are. 

Another phrase that could be better to describe this phenomena is "Survival of the good enough". When we hear the word "fittest", many often think of people in bodybuilding shows with one overall winner. In reality, fitness isn't always how strong you are, and it's not about being number one. As we have discussed in class, fitness can be explained by a metaphor of currency. If you are able to produce more viable and successful offspring than your peers, you would be considered more fit than them. Factors that could affect ones fitness can include their strength, but is not limited to that. It could also include how elaborate and successful one's mating ritual is, a feature about them that allows them to get food easier, or ward off predators better than the rest of the population. 

This image shows that although the blue butterfly was successful and able to reproduce, the pink butterfly was able to produce more offspring. In the metaphor of currency and fitness, the pink butterfly has more currency, or is more fit, because it has more offspring.

An important thing to note about fitness is that it is all relative. The phrase "Survival of the Fittest" can lead to many misconceptions, including that there is only one that is the "fittest" that will survive. There is a joke that goes along the lines of "How do you survive if a bear is chasing you" in which the answer is "Be faster than your friend". All jokes aside, this does have some truth to it. In a life threatening situation where lets say, 10 animals are running from a predator, you don't have to be the fittest, or fastest animal in the herd to survive, you just have to be fast compared to the others. This is why the saying "Survival of the good enough" might be a better explanation of the phenomenon of fitness. You don't have to be the best- just good relative to everyone else. 

In the case of the "good enough", they might not be the absolute best animals within a species or population, but they fare well compared to others which still allows them to keep reproducing and passing on their genes. This increases their "currency" of fitness compared to the organisms that are unable to survive to reproduce.

This image shows bear chasing fish in a stream. The bear only wants to catch one fish. The orange fish is the slowest while the pink fish is the fastest, with the purple and green being in-between the two. Because the fish is the slowest of the four, it ends up being eaten by the bear. Although the green and purple fish were not as fast as the pink one, they were able to survive because they were fast relative to the orange fish. This is is why saying "Survival of the good enough" makes sense. They might not have been the most fit, but they were good enough to survive.