Talk:Evolutionary pressure

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jtmitchell2. Peer reviewers: Relavoie.

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References and size

Why is this vital article unsourced? JFW | T@lk 16:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Why is this vital article so small? -- Tuvok^^{Talk|Desk|Contribs}  17:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Why does this vital article have no stub sign?

Why, then, doesn't someone do something about this vital article?

Original research?

"Evolutionary pressure" makes it sound like evolutionary change results from other than random, blind processes. It implies there is a directing force, which is contrary to the theory of evolution. See Introduction to evolution and History of evolution. Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 20:07, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Evolutionary pressure relates to why a species evolves, usually on a small scale. Random changes may happen in a population, but unless it has and advantage of some sort it will just be a random change that has no impact on the overall population. For example, if Roundup is not sprayed on plants in large amounts, the population does not evolve to become resistant to it. This article describes why the overall population evolves when faced by new obstacles.Lifelonglego (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Evolutionary is not an actual force, but a concept describing the process by which an organism evolves.Lifelonglego (talk) 16:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Antibiotic Resistance Section Improvements

1. This section provides a very generalized overview of how natural selection has led to bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. A more detailed explanation of how the bacteria become resistant over multiple generations would add a greater understanding to the evolutionary process and why this pressure exists.

2. There are not any specific examples of antibiotic resistant bacteria or names of antibiotics that are commonly used to treat illnesses. The addition of specific examples, such as the bacteria C. difficle would enhance the content of the section.

3. In order to demonstrate why evolutionary pressures for antibiotic resistance are significant, it would be beneficial to add more information about the consequences of antibiotic resistance. A suggested area of interest could be how nosocomial infections have developed as a result of antibiotic resistance.

Psellas.1 (talk) 03:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Selection pressure for beneficial traits

This article seems to imply that selection pressure is a negative phenomenon—sickle cell in exchange for limited malaria resistence. But selection pressure conserved lactase persistence because it improved maternal health and reproductive success, while providing benefits to the society at large. There's no negative in this process. Please clarify the definition and provide appropriate examples.

In fact, the article would benefit from a wider range of examples throughout. I am not qualified to provide them or to expand on the general definition, so I would ask the author and/or other science experts to do so.

Also, the argument here would be clearer if the author was more careful about the use of "it." In a few cases, I found it difficult to discern what "it" refered to, even with multiple rereadings. KC 05:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boydstra (talk • contribs)

Propose article deletion/redirect/disambiguation page

I don't see the value in this article. In quantitative terms, we have the article selection coefficient. It would be good have a quantitative article on selection intensity too: right now the material can be found at Heritability#Response_to_selection as the "Selection Differential". In qualitative terms, we have natural selection. I do not see what niche this article fills, and right now it is not of high quality. Perhaps the best thing to do is to replace it by a redirect to the three options above.

It would be useful to have an article on selective constraint, eg the natural selection page talks about sequences being "conserved over time due to selective pressure against deleterious variants" but this article does not go in that direction, and a wikilink from selection pressure in that usage to here would be inappropriate. Perhaps the Ka/Ks ratio page would be a good place to start on building material on selective constraint. In any case, this is an example of how the redirect from selection pressure to here is problematic.Joannamasel (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

There is also Natural Selection#Directionality of selection, Disruptive Selection, Stabilizing Selection and Directional Selection, which deal with the type of concepts I would have expected to find on this page. Ethan Bass (talk) 20:21, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

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Added section

Added a section on humans exerting evolutionary pressure, along with three sub categories about specific instances of this. Jtmitchell2 (talk) 02:49, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Selection is not a "force" but rather a "process"

In his book Natural selection in the wild, Endler exposes explicitly the fact that selection is not a force and that there is no such thing as "pressure" exerted on a trait. See his second chapter titled "Philosophical Comments" on page 27 to read the argument.

"Endler, J. A. 1986. Natural selection in the wild. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beausoleilmo (talk • contribs) 00:10, 30 October 2019 (UTC)