Inheritance, Second Principle of Natural Selection
Inheritance is the second of the five principles of natural selection, abbreviated as V.I.S.T.A. Niles Eldredge, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, formulated the acronym to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution.
For the museum’s Darwin exhibit, Eldridge uses the acronym to explain how the principles of variation, inheritance, selection, time, and adaptation drive natural selection. Inheritance is the second principle of Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection.
In 1837, nearly twenty years before publishing The Origin of Species, Darwin drew his first sketch linking species by inheritance (pictured left).
