Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I'm not an expert on this at all, but my understanding is that "evolutionary advantage" is a misconception. Mutations don't have a goal, and they don't always provide an advantage. Hopefully someone smarter than me can explain better.
Edit: spelling
Evolution throws spaghetti at the wall and anything that sticks it keeps. Usually stuff sticks because it's useful in some way, but some stuff sticks just because of random chance.
For example if a few individuals colonize a new location, then whatever genes those founders have will be prevalent in the new population. The classic example is the deaf people on Martha's Vineyard. Some of the original settlers of the island were deaf and passed that down to their descendants.
The smaller a population is the more it's affected by random genetic drift. (It's easier for a gene to randomly spread to an entire population if the population is small.) The larger it is the more it's affected by natural selection.