Measuring Adaptive Behavior
An organism’s behavioral strategies and ability to adapt will determine how they respond under different environmental conditions. Fitness is a common measure of adaptive success, and can be defined as the number of descendants left over after a group exhibits a particular behavioral strategy. Successful strategies will result in increased survival and reproduction, which in turn can be characterized as a profitable behavioral adaption.
Read more about this topic: Adaptive Behavior (ecology)
Famous quotes containing the words measuring, adaptive and/or behavior:
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