Talk:Fitness (biology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Darwin This article is part of WikiProject Evolutionary biology, an attempt at building a useful set of articles on evolutionary biology and its associated subfields such as population genetics, quantitative genetics, molecular evolution, phylogenetics, evolutionary developmental biology. It is distinct from the WikiProject Tree of Life in that it attempts to cover patterns, process and theory rather than systematics and taxonomy. If you would like to participate, there are some suggestions on this page (see also Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information) or visit WikiProject Evolutionary biology.
A summary of this article appears in Natural selection.

Isn't lifetime reproductove success a measure of fitness? What about r , the natural rate of increase?


I've redirected "reproductive success" to this page as they're pretty similar concepts, so it might be good to mention the term somewhere and any differences in the uses of the terms. Joe D (t) 21:45, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Definition

It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce

I think that might not be broad enough. I guess chemical evolution isn't considered part of biology, but "fitness" in this sense could be applied to that, too. And "reproduction" only applies to things that reproduce. Horizontal gene transfer is not really reproduction, for instance, but a bacteria that transfers its genes in this way is more fit than one that doesn't. — Omegatron 16:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)