Practice question
Question
Disruptive selection results in
Explanation
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 Bimodal distribution 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.