Submitted by insink2300 t3_11drr8s in askscience
7LeagueBoots t1_jac0s19 wrote
Reply to comment by PatrickKieliszek in Why does temperature determine the sex of certain egg laying animals like crocodiles? by insink2300
No, it needs to be not worse than. Better is nice, but it's not necessary.
The selection process is often not about gaining an advantage, it's about not having a disadvantage. 'As good as' is usually just fine for evolution.
owiseone23 t1_jac139q wrote
it's not uncommon for traits to evolve across "fitness valleys". That is, a trait with positive fitness that requires multiple generations to evolve with intermediate generations having negative fitness.
With a large population and a lot of time, random variation makes it possible to evolve across fitness valleys.
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