Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen
No, that's not exactly true. Natural selection rewards overall fitness to survive. That is, the most adept in their environment are the ones that pass on their genes to the next generation. All, even those least able to thrive are physically capable of reproduction, epecially in the male sex, where the physical difficulties of gestation are not endured.
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Fitness in evolutionary biology is
reproductive fitness. "Survival" is meaningless evolutionarily if you do not reproduce to pass on anything.
So while some non-reproductive trait might increase the number of offspring you produce (or sire), the fact that more offspring is created is what matters and is "fitness" in population genetics.
You can be a novel "superman" and it makes no difference if you do not pass the genes on.
More genes passed on is more "fit."
Natural selection "rewards" nothing at all. It just is.