Fitness

• Fitness is an indication of an individual’s ability to be successful at surviving and reproducing
• It refers to the contribution made to the gene pool of the next generation by individual genotypes
• Fitness can be defined in absolute or relative terms
• Absolute fitness is the ratio between the frequency of individuals of a particular genotype after selection, to those before selection
• Relative fitness is the ratio of the number of surviving offspring per individual of a particular genotype to the number of surviving offspring per individual of the most successful genotype