Natural Selection

In Chapter 5 of this scientific book, The Selfish Gene, I found a very interesting explanation of natural selection. The book says “In the population sitting at the other stable state, ´resident wins, intruder retreats´, natural selection would favour individuals who strove to be residents.”(Pg 79) Here the author refers to “resident” as the organism who is living in a certain terrain, and the “intruder” is the organism trying to find territory. He also explains to us that if the organisms didn’t respect this rule, then their survival chances would be less. He says that the rule lets them be unharmed because there are no fights over territory, the intruder runs away. But this intruder will never become a resident, because all the territory will have a resident of its own. This is when natural selection acts, giving the resident the advantage. This means the worst for the invader, it will perish for the simple reason that it will never have its own territory. He will always run away and never win, he will eventually die.