What are five factors that influence evolution?

Factors that are relevant to natural selection are survival and reproduction.

Factors that might influence natural selection are limitless and could be anything from endurance to immune function, metabolism, speed, strength, sharpness of teeth, insulation from the cold etc etc.

Also there is overproduction of young, variation, competition, and environmental factors.

Specific five factors:

1. Gene flow - individuals immigrating and emigrating change allele frequencies in a population.
2. Genetic drift - by pure chance, a current population produces a new, smaller population with less variation.
3. Mutation - a new, favorable allele will increase in frequency in a population over generations.
4. Natural selection - traits impoving survival rate (also improving reproduction rate) will increase in frequency.
5. Sexual selection - traits improving mating success will also increase in frequency.

Another perspective:According to science, an organism has two purposes: survival and reproduction. Both of these have a place in the theory of evolution. First, those who survive need to be the best adapted for survival; you have probably heard the term "survival of the fittest." If an organism within a species is better adapted for survival, he will obviously survive over the other organisms within his species; since he is the Survivor, he will also be more likely to pass on his genes.

Darwin's theory of evolution developed by watching birds; he noticed that two variations of the same bird had developed, each with a specifically developed beak for opening the different types of nuts (one type of nut was found on one side of the island while the other was on the other side of the island). This showed that over time, the birds with better beaks for cracking open their particular food source were more likely to survive and pass on the gene for this "better" beak. Over time (after many, many, MANY generations) the birds evolved until the one bird became two, due to their different food sources. Evolution is a "fine-tuning" of the species. It is constantly happening, sometimes occurring simply over a long period of time OR it can happen as a result of a mutation that turns out to be beneficial.