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It's more reproducing than surviving. If the population of some species increases and the number of copies of some allele remains constant we could consider than gene less fit than the other alleles, in the population genetics sense. So it's frequency rather than survival that geneticists look at. But that proves that there are indeed other ways that they could have defined fitness if they wanted to.

> It's more reproducing than surviving

Well that's a given mate, nobody's talking about populations that dont reproduce are they? And even then you're still making the same tautological mistake.... If they survived they must have been fit

That tautological is not a mistake. Surviving to reproduce is the definition of fitness from an evolutionary standpoint.

That is correct. Biology uses the term fit slightly different than the general public

You’re conflating the colloquial meaning of “fitness” with the technical definition. It’s unfortunately overloaded.