The measurement of Darwinian fitness in human populations
- 23 July 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by The Royal Society in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. B. Biological Sciences
- Vol. 222 (1226) , 33-50
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1984.0048
Abstract
Darwinian fitness of a biological trait refers to the contribution to successive generations made by individuals possessing the trait. This contribution depends on the age-specific fecundity and mortality of the individuals in the population. This paper gives, for human populations, an empirical study of two measures of Darwinian fitness: the Malthusian parameter, which describes the rate of increase of the actual population size, and entropy which describes the rate of increase of the effective population size. This empirical study indicates that Darwinian fitness is measured by entropy. This finding is in accord with the predictions of recent theoretical studies.This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
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