Correct, an individual does not evolve, but the process of evolution is the result of selection on and reproduction of individuals. You can't just change it to be about selection on and reproduction of populations and then treat the individual-level stuff as an implementation detail that you can ignore.
Evolution is the result of the reproduction of populations of individuals. A single organism reproducing once is a non-event, evolutionarily speaking.
This implies effects in the population that are counterintuitive from the perspective of the individual, which is why it's important to make the distinction.
>> A single organism reproducing once is a non-event, evolutionarily speaking.
True, but a single organism with a new trait failing to reproduce means that the trait cannot be passed on, and therefore does not exist in the population in an evolutionary sense. You absolutely can't ignore individuals in the evolutionary process.
Well, it's much more controversial than that-- but perhaps I'm to blame, because it's also more controversial than I've been trying to claim.
Perhaps the more neutral framing is this: There are things that happen to life which you will not be able to explain using a primarily gene-, individual-, or group-centered perspective. This is because evolution is complex, and anyone who claims to really understand it is lying.
I've been advocating for the population perspective mainly because it necessarily includes what's going on at a lower level, but the safer truth is simply that anything you think you know on the basis of theory needs to pass through many levels of analysis, and then be filtered with a healthy dose of what really happens.
