Arturo Rodriguez offered this clarification of my slightly vague description of "fitness" :
| "Fitness is nothing more than the net reproductive success of an organism. Your example of the lion, tortoise and human may not be the best example. It is true that the tortoise can survive a lion attack while a human cannot, but if we leave the lion out of the equation and assume that the tortoise laid 20 eggs and I produced only one child, then at that moment the tortoise is more "fit", but if all her babies were eaten by predators over time (before those babies reproduced themselves), and my one child still survives, then I have become more "fit" than the tortoise. As you can see, fitness fluctuates according to the situation presented. This also happens with individual adaptations which is illustrated by your example. Humans cannot survive a hungry lion, while a tortoise can due to it's hard shell. In that situation the tortoise wins. However, I can thermoregulate my body temperature which can help me in situations of extreme cold or heat. In that case I win. I know it is a bit hard, but maybe you could illustrate this definition. Remember, fitness is net reproductive success." |