What part of evolution by selection is random? What is NOT random?

Question

What part of evolution by selection is random? What is NOT random?

Answer 1

The random parts are the selective pressures themselves and genetic mutations.  What is not random are the traits that give a selective advantage.

Conditions can, and do, change over time, and sometimes change quite suddenly.  A species that is successful during a few centuries of cold weather may suddenly be unsuccessful when the average local temperature rises.  Of course weather and geologic phenomena are not totally random, geologists, meteorologists and other scientists study them.  Random changes in the DNA sequence of an individual can give it a selective advantage of disadvantage.  The appearance of the mutation is random, but the benefit it does (or does not) confer is not random, it is based on the environment the organism lives in.

Genetic drift and gene flow are also random events but these are considered separate mechanisms of evolution and are not a part of natural selection, the mechanism of evolution that people are most familiar with.

Answer 2

It's 100% random.  To be anything else would imply intelligence.

Answer 3

mutations, genetic drift, n i forgot the third one is random

umm i think everything is random...artificial selection is not random

hope this helps

Answer 4

Mutation is random.

Genetic drift is random.

Selection is NOT random.

It is selection that is the main driving force of evolution.

Evolution is NOT random.