How does natural selection produce adaptations in a species?

Question

How does natural selection produce adaptations in a species?

Answer 1

Any specie that is unable to adapt to enviromental ,physiological and biological changes will  extinguish itself. Only species that are adaptable to all changes will still be in the natural selection process.

Answer 2

Natural selection is a very slow process. This is natures way to help certain species survive by adapting to their environment. This may take thousands of years. Take for instance an arctic fox. They were once the same color as a red fox or a grey fox, and still are during the summer months, but during the winter they have the ability to change the coat color to white. This ability to change fur color is species diversity, a survival tool for adaptation and a must for the  survival of the animal. This ability to change color is passed along to the next generation of foxes and the cycle will continue till there is no longer an arctic region.

Answer 3

The body begins to adapt to what it needs to eat, the environment it's in, the temperature, think about it.

If you leave a lot of lizards in an extremely cold climate, and enough of them survive to breed and thrive, they will eventually grow hair to adapt to the blistering cold. The body knows what it needs to function, and through breeding, the species will eventually be born with a full body of hair.

Answer 4

Strictly speacking, natural selection doesn't "produce" adaptations.

The characteristics (adaptations) have to be present in at least a few members of a species population (or emerge via mutation).  Those members of the species who have a favorable characteristic will have a better chance of surviving and reprodcing--thus passing on the characteristic, compared to those who don't have the characteristic. So, over time, more and more members of the species have the characteristic--and so the species as a whole is better adapted to its environment.

Just remember this is a statistical probability--a particular individual may not survive, even with the characteristic (just bad luck) and some who don't have it will survive.

In short, "natural selection" is our label for the sorting  process of sorting that goes on in species populations that tends to spread pro-survival traits and weed out contra-survival ones.

Answer 5

The adaptations are a response to environmental challenges which become manifest in various ways.  The classic example is the set of Darwin finches on the Galapagos Islands.  Each finch has adapted a specialized bill to enable it to successfully obtain food in it's particular ecosystem.

Answer 6

Natural selection does not "produce" anything.  Processes such as mutation produce changes (or there are characteristics inherent in particular organisms that give no advantage or disadvantages).  What natural selection does is act on variations.  If one set of genetically programmed variations gives organisms that have it an advantage those organisms are more likely to survive, thrive and breed.  The particular characteristic is passed on to the offspring, which are themselves more likely to breed until the characteristic exists throughout that species (or a new species with that characteristics comes into existence.)