Practice question

Disruptive or diversifying selection favors both extremes over intermediate, increasing variance and potentially creating bimodal distribution. Example finches specializing on large and small seeds when intermediate seeds scarce. If hybrids have low fitness, reproductive isolation may evolve promoting sympatric divergence. This maintains polymorphism and can lead to adaptive radiation. Hence Both extremes are favored, opposite to stabilizing selection maintaining mean. This concept integrates genetics, ecology and molecular evidence, frequently tested in NEET, GATE and CSIR-NET, highlighting links between genotype, phenotype and environment.