Selective Breeding Flashcards
What is selective breeding?
Selective breeding is a process carried out by people to improve characteristics in plants and animals usually for human benefit.
What is artificial selection?
Artificial selection is another term for selective breeding as it is carried out by humans to improve certain traits in organisms.
What are organisms selectively bred for?
Organisms are selectively bred for features such as increased meat or milk production larger eggs larger fruit resistance to disease increased nutritional content and calm temperament.
What is the method of selective breeding?
Selective breeding is a long process involving selecting organisms with desired traits breeding them together and selecting offspring that display those traits to breed over many generations.
What is the first step in selective breeding?
The first step is to select a male and female organism that display the desired characteristic such as high meat production.
What happens after the male and female organisms are selected in selective breeding?
After selecting the male and female organisms they are bred together to produce offspring.
How are offspring selected in selective breeding?
The offspring that display the desired characteristic are selected and bred together.
How is selective breeding repeated over generations?
The process is repeated over many generations by selecting offspring that show the desired trait and breeding them together.
What problems can arise from selective breeding?
Problems with selective breeding include inbreeding which makes offspring genetically similar and vulnerable to the same diseases and can lead to loss of genetic diversity.
What is the impact of inbreeding in selective breeding?
Inbreeding can result in a loss of alleles from a population making it difficult to produce different varieties in the future.
How can selective breeding cause health problems?
Selective breeding for certain traits can lead to health problems such as exaggerated features that cause breathing difficulties in certain dog breeds like pugs and French bulldogs.
