Difference Between Directional Selection And Disruptive Selection

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Directional selection and disruptive selection are two of the three types of natural selection. Although both of them result in a population adapting to biotic and abiotic environments, they differ in many ways. Directional selection occurs when one extreme phenotype is favored over the other phenotypes, whereas disruptive selection occurs when two or more phenotypes are favored over the others. Another difference is that disruptive selection favors polymorphism and directional selection causes species to evolve over time and leads to the extinction of those lacking the phenotypes causing the distribution curve to shift.
A common example of directional selection is the human struggle against malaria. Plasmodium is spread by the bites of