Question

Whose doctrine influenced Charles Darwin to formulate theory of natural selection?
A) Malthus
B) Haldane
C) Hardy Weinberg
D) Sewall Wright

Answer 1

Hint: Evolution is the changes made by an organism to survive in the environment. The study of evolution has many different types of theories that explain about the organisms and its ancestors and how it evolved.

Complete answer:
To solve this question, we have to know Charles Darwin theory of natural selection.
The Darwin theory of natural selection explains the population that evolved such that they get better suitable according to the environment. Before proposing any conclusion Darwin undergo many observation to prove his theory like traits are often inheritable that means characteristics are passed to the offspring from the parents, more offspring are produced than can survive that means the organisms produces more offspring compared to the environment can support, and offspring vary in the heritable traits means the shape, size, colour, etc are vary among the offspring. Based on these observations Darwin concluded that in a population, some of the organisms get inherited to survive and reproduce and with this trait they produce more offspring in the next generation and as a result the trait makes them more capable to survive and reproduce. In this way, over generation to generation the population becomes adapted to the environment and increases their population.
Now, this theory is not a sudden experiment of Charles Darwin; he got inspired by the doctrine of Malthus, who proposed the Malthusien theory of human population. The principle of Malthusian theory of human population states that the human population gets double n each cycle, in other words, the population grows exponentially and the production of food increases at an arithmetic rate. This process of arithmetic growth of food with simultaneous exponential growth of the human population predicted that once there would be no resources remaining to survive.

Thus, the correct option is ‘A’. Malthus.

Note: During the natural selection process the organisms undergo random mutations to produce the new heritable traits like fur colour. This mutation passed to the offspring as it occurs in the germline and this will repeat in all generations.