Only variations that confer an advantage to an individual organism will survive in a population. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

Explanation

Yes, only those variations that confer advantage to an individual organism will survive in a population. This will become clear from the following example. Suppose there is a population of red beetles in the green bushes and a colour variation arises during reproduction so that one beetle is now green in colour (instead of red). This variation offers advantage of survial because the green beetle can mix up with green bushes, it cannot be spotted and eaten up by a crow and hence its population will increase. If however, the variation had produced a blue coloured beetle, then this colour could not offer any survival advantage because blue beetle in green bushes could be easily spotted by a crow and eaten by it.