CIE IGCSE Biology

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18.1.5 Artificial Selection

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Selective Breeding

  • Selective breeding means to select individuals with desirable characteristics and breed them together
  • The process doesn’t stop there though because it’s likely that not all of the offspring will show the characteristics you want so offspring that do show the desired characteristics are selected and bred together
  • This process has to be repeated for many successive generations before you can definitely say you have a ‘new breed’ which will reliably show those selected characteristics in all offspring
  • An example of selective breeding is dog breeders who select which dogs can mate together to increase the likelihood of puppies displaying desirable characteristics eg. coat colour
  • This has given rise to the many recognisable dog breeds of today, all the same species (Canis familiaris) and all descended from one breed 
    Selective breeding dogs

Natural vs Artificial Selection: Extended

Natural vs Artificial Selection table, IGCSE & GCSE Biology revision notes

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