question_answer 61)

  What is artificial selection? Do you think it affects the process of natural selection? How?

Answer:

                  Artificial selection (or selective breeding) describes intentional breeding for certain traits or combination of traits by humans, for exploiting the variations existing among species. It isof three types-mass selection, pure-line selection and clonal selection. Yes, it affects the process of natural selection, Natural selection selects for/or against traits ;based on their effect on the fitness of the organism in artificial selection, traits are selected based on human preference for improving traits. The process of natural selection leads to evolutionary change in the expression of the trait in the population, whereas the artificial selection, though being the same process, involves the traits preferred by humans for its own benefit. It is a much faster process than the natural selection but it may impose threat on diversity in long run making it unfit to the environment.