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Darwin uses the term adaptation to mean a trait that helps improve an organism’s “fitness” and its ability to survive in nature and overcome competition. Most adaptations arise through natural selection.
Adaptation Quotes in The Origin of Species
The The Origin of Species quotes below are all either spoken by Adaptation or refer to Adaptation. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.
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Chapter 3
Quotes
Many cases are on record showing how complex and unexpected are the checks and relations between organic beings, which have to struggle together in the same country.
Chapter 5
Quotes
In one sense the conditions of life may be said, not only to cause variability, either directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection, for the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall survive.
Chapter 8
Quotes
It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as corporeal structures for the welfare of each species, under its present conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable.
As natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure or instinct, each profitable to the individual under its conditions of life, it may reasonably be asked, how a long and graduated succession of modified architectural instincts, all tending towards the present perfect plan of construction, could have profited the progenitors of the hive-bee? I think the answer is not difficult: cells constructed like those of the bee or the wasp gain in strength, and save much in labour and space, and in the materials of which they are constructed.
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Chapter 11
Quotes
On the theory of natural selection, the extinction of old forms and the production of new and improved forms are intimately connected together.
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Adaptation Term Timeline in The Origin of Species
The timeline below shows where the term Adaptation appears in The Origin of Species. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...plants and animals were produced. The important factor in domestication is that it results in adaptations that are useful to humans, not necessarily to the animal or plant itself. It was...
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...their adaptability for humans. While Darwin acknowledged that there were certainly limits to the possible adaptations of an animal, he didn’t believe that humans had reached that limit yet.
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Chapter 2
...argued that these little differences were extremely important to his theories, since he believed in adaptations that came from an accumulation of little changes over time. Not all little variations eventually...
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Chapter 6
...and believed these were evidence that the human eye could have been perfected through gradual adaptations over millions of years.
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...bee violates this principle (since the bee dies after stinging), Darwin argued that such an adaptation is good for the species as a whole, and that it is still possible to...
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...the external conditions of an organism’s life that led to the inheritance of variations and adaptations.
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Chapter 7
...ears of mice, for example, were listed by Bronn as an example of a trivial adaptation, but Darwin noted that these ears were full of nerves and that their size likely...
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...environments. Another solution is considering how a feature like a long neck requires other body adaptations to be an advantage, meaning it would not be naturally selected for in all animals.
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...Greenland whale is so large and complex that it couldn’t have arisen through slight successive adaptations under natural selection. Darwin held firm in his disagreement, however, using the example of the...
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Ultimately, Darwin’s disagreement with Mivart was that Mivart believed drastic adaptations like a bat’s wings happened suddenly, rather than through successive variations as Darwin proposed. While...
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Chapter 8
...on these neuter ants through gradual changes. The different castes seem to be a useful adaptation for the ants.
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Chapter 13
...population from a larger landmass, where the isolated population on the island subsequently developed new adaptations.
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Chapter 14
...in fact are just the result of natural selection working in similar ways. Though analogical adaptations may play an important role in an organism’s survival, they are mostly useless for classification.
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...is for variability, and so this is why features like vertebrae are particularly responsive to adaptation. Over time, these changes can become great, with a skull, for example, being formed from...
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Chapter 15
...ancestor species that migrated around the world, and in isolated geographic locations, the process of adaptation and natural selection often led to endemic species.
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...could also convey important information about genealogy and fertility. New varieties and species with improved adaptations will eventually supplant less well-adapted species and cause them to become extinct. As always, natural...
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...of how natural selection could have worked in successive variations, showing that great leaps in adaptation wouldn’t have been necessary. Sometimes disuse of a part or organ causes it to become...
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