Table 3 Common phrase-based misunderstandings of evolution

Survival of the fittest

The natural world is dominated by combat between peers; “fitness” is a measure of combat ability.

No single characteristic makes for fitness in all cases; fitness is “likelihood that one will become an ancestor.”

selective agents, selective environments, competition, symbiosis, mutualisms, coevolution

The ladder of progress

Species attempt to ascend the rungs of a “ladder of progress,” with humanity at the top.

Changing selective environments shape the change of species over time, not an inner drive; also, species do not know that evolution is happening in the first place.

complexity, evolutionary “progress,” predator–prey “arms races,” history of the “Great Chain of Being”

The missing link

Life forms are arranged as neat “links” in a chain leading into the past.

Drawing lines around a species can be difficult, and it is best to think of species through time as shades in a spectrum rather than discrete links; paleontologists do not spend their lives only in the quest for “missing links”; any species can be considered a “link” between past and future forms.

species definition (living and fossil), reproductive isolation, speciation