Artificial selection: good or bad?

Artificial Selection: Good or Bad?

What is artificial selection?

Artificial selection is the breeding of certain traits over other traits. Artificial selection is relatively easy to accomplish. A specific heritable genetic trait that the breeder desires. the plant or animal is then breed with another of its kind with similar trait, resulting in offspring until the specific traits is achieved at the desired level.

Result of artificial selection
Artificial selection are easy to see.
For example: The domestication cycle of dogs (canines) being breed by their owners in order to emphasize lees-aggressive traits has gone on for years, and has almost nothing like their grey wolf ancestors.
Daily cattle are bred in in hopes of producing more milk, but some lines now suffer from increased infections and fertility problems.
Persian cats that are bred for extremely flat faces often develop respiratory problems and may have trouble eating.


What is Natural Selection?

Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, the procvess in nature by which only the organisms that are best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics to the next generation. Individuals less well adapted to their environment tend to be eliminated, where environment represents the combined biological and physical influences.

Results for Natural selection



For example ; The peppered moth (Biston betularia) is a temperate nocturnal moth species that provides us with a great example of natural selection. "The peppered Moth Pre-industrial Revolution." The common colour of peppered moths was light grey (Biston betulana f. typica), and this colour type represented life predominant revolution. the moth's light grey colour closely matched the lichen-covered trees in their environment. (lichens are a slow growing life form that you can find on the bark of a many trees and in decomposing woods.)


Is artificial selection good or bad?

For me, artificial selection is either good or bad because all of the listed traits that are bred for do not help the animals to survive in the wild. I think, the only thing why do humans bred other animals is for their own desire. Humans wants to be unique. It would not be necessary for the breeders to know that traits are inherited. By spurning animals or plants that did not meet whatever requirements they were after they would still be imposing selection. Dogs are perhaps a good example as they have a long history of domestication by humans. Many breeds now kept as pets are a lot more docile than their wild counterparts, but one can imagine a dog prone to attacking humans would be driven out or killed by our ancestors. Thus, these animals would have a far lower chance of passing on their genes. Conversely, dogs that were submissive and did what we wanted would be favoured, both in being protected from predators and fed or watered.


What about you? What do you think about Artificial selection?

Sources:
http;//geneticsevolution.suite101.com
http://www.askabiologist.org.uk
http://www.babasword.com/writing/rge/Artificial%20Selection.pdf
http://www.mindbites.com/lesson/3931-biology-artificial-selection-in-action