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What exactly do geneticists mean when they talk about “fitness”?

April 26, 2017Fitness geneticists mean talk

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What exactly do geneticists mean when they talk about “fitness”?

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When geneticists or biologists speak of fitness they do not mean the kind of athletic conditioning that this word commonly brings to mind. Biological fitness is essentially the capability of a certain genotype to survive and reproduce successfully. Fitness measures the quantity of copies of genes (from a particular genotype) found in the next generation; it is a measure of reproductive success. Fitness can be and is measured and calculated by population geneticists.