Stabilizing Selection Occurs When

Question

Stabilizing selection occurs when  
A) the environment controls which organisms will survive.
B) humans determine which organisms will survive.
C) the extremes of the population have a lesser chance to survive.
D) the extremes of the population have a better chance to survive.
E) the organisms on one extreme of the population have a better chance to survive than those on the other extreme.

Accepted Answer

Stabilizing selection favors the intermediate phenotype and selects against the extremes. In this type of natural selection, individuals with extreme traits have a lower chance of survival and reproduction compared to those with intermediate traits. This leads to a decrease in the overall genetic variation within a population. Stabilizing selection occurs when the environment favors a stable or consistent trait or phenotype, and prevents drastic deviations from that trait.