and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny." So, there has to be a limiting factor on organisms that balances the system, and Darwin was right in thinking of the struggle for survival. He coined the term "Natural Selection", and defines it as, "The preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations". This is a direct result of the struggle for existence. If there are too many animals in a particular area, for example, the ones that are the strongest or best adapted to that area (due to variations) will survive.There are different types of selection that need to be mentioned. Natural selection is the force that drives adaptive evolution, but there is a different type of selection that can occur- artificial selection. This is selection caused by man. We can manipulate a species grown under our care to produce particular traits that we find favorable to us, whether it be color of a flower, taste of a fruit, thickness of fur, or anything else we might prize. This is different from natural selection for one simple reason- it is not natural, it is forced. Natural selection through the divergence of character is a bit more complicated. It is possible that when a species has offspring they vary in one given character from the parents, and then their offspring vary in the same character but to a higher degree. Eventually, this separation into varieties can lead to breeds, and finally perhaps into species. This is considered divergence of character. Darwin uses an example of pigeon breeders who prefer opposite extremes in beak size. One prefers a short beak and the other prefers a long beak, and as the breeders continue to choose these extremes they will eventually lead to two distinct sub-breeds. These will then become their very own breeds that are different in character from each other as well as from their parents. And as time goes on, the...
