What are adaptive peaks How do organisms move from one adapt

What are adaptive peaks? How do organisms move from one adaptive peak to another? 100 words or more please

Solution

An equilibrium state in a population when the gene pool has allele frequencies that maximize the average fitness of a population\'s members. In other words, A high point (perhaps one of several) on an adaptive landscape; selection tends to drive the genotype composition of the population toward a combination corresponding to an adaptive peak.

Most extant organisms are thought to sit on the “peaks” of such adaptive landscapes. However, how does a phenotype shift from one peak to another is not clear. Common hypotheses include

(1) There are “ridges” connecting the adaptive peaks, such that phenotypes along the ridge are more or less equally fit under a specific environment;

(2) There are no ridges connecting the peaks but when effective population size is small enough, phenotypes may be able to traverse the less-adaptive region (i.e. adaptive valley) by genetic drift.