Florida Biology EOC Practice Test 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Disruptive selection is the type of natural selection that favors individuals at both extremes of a trait while selecting against the average or intermediate phenotypes. This process can lead to increased variation in a population by promoting the survival and reproduction of extreme forms.

For example, in a habitat where both very large and very small seeds are available but medium-sized seeds are scarce, birds with beaks that are either very small or very large would be better adapted to obtain food compared to those with medium-sized beaks. Over time, this could result in a population with more individuals exhibiting extreme beak sizes as opposed to the average beak size.

This contrasts with stabilizing selection, which favors individuals with intermediate traits, and directional selection, which favors individuals at one extreme. Furthermore, neutral selection does not favor any particular trait or phenotype, allowing those traits to drift in frequency without selection pressure. Hence, disruptive selection is significant in generating diversity within a population by favoring traits that are not typically common in the average individuals of that population.