Intraspecific competition and evolution

Adaptation through natural selection is one of the key elements of the Darwinian theory of evolution. This process has been the focus of much attention, partly because of its importance in the understanding of biological evolution, and partly because it appears as a nice directed deterministic process. The annoying aspect of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is, however, that the raw material of the process, the pheno- typic variation, originates as random errors in the hereditary transmission.