New species develop naturally through the process of natural selection . Due to natural selection, organisms with traits that better enable them to adapt to their environment will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers. Natural selection causes beneficial heritable traits to become more common in a population and unfavorable heritable traits to become less common. For example, a giraffe’s neck is beneficial because it allows the giraffe to reach leaves high in trees. Natural selection caused this beneficial trait to become more common than short necks.
When visiting the Galapagos islands Beth was fascinated by the many species of finches. Each had different sides beaks and had carved out its on habitat on the island eating the seeds that were available there. Each one seemed to have the size beak that was perfect for the seeds it ate.
Were finches without optimal sized beaks more or less likely to pass on genes