What does Natural selection operate on?
Natural Selection is driven by random mutations and sexual reproduction. Organisms produce more offspring than can survive. These offspring compete for resources for food and water and who can aviod stuff such as predators and disease. Sexual Reproduction allows a population to have variation. If all of a population was the same, then it could easily die out if it had a adaptation that decreased its chance of survival. With sexual reproduction, all of a population has some sort of variation. Random Mutations allow organisms to gain new adaptions to help them survive in their enviroment. Together, Random mutations and sexual reproduction allow organisms that can survive in their enviroment survive and pass on their genes to their offspring.