Q.'All organisms produce more young ones'. Comment.

Darwinism, or the theory of the origin of species by natural selection, was put forward by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in his 1859 book 'On the Origin of Species', based on years of direct observation gathered during his voyage as a naturalist (December 1831 to October 1836) and shaped by the influence of the geologist Charles Lyell (uniformitarianism), the economist Thomas Malthus (on population growth outstripping food supply), and contemporary plant and animal breeders' use of artificial selection. Darwinism rests on five linked postulates: (1) overproduction — species have a natural tendency to produce far more offspring than can survive, in a roughly geometric ratio (e.g. a single Salmon may lay about 28 lakh eggs in a season); (2) struggle for existence — this overproduction inevitably leads to competition for limited food, space, mates and safety from enemies; (3) organic variations — populations show differences in morphology, physiology, nutrition, habit and behaviour, providing the raw material evolution acts on; (4) natural selection — individuals with favourable variations are better adapted and are selected by nature, surviving and reproducing more than those with unfavourable variations (Herbert Spencer's 'survival of the fittest'); and (5) origin of new species (speciation) — favourable variations accumulate across generations u …