SINCE 1828
natural selection
nounDefinition of natural selection
: a natural process that results in the survival and reproductive success of individuals or groups best adjusted to their environment and that leads to the perpetuation of genetic qualities best suited to that particular environment
Examples of natural selection in a Sentence
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The only plausible way for this to happen is natural selection: the Bajau with those variants had more descendants than those who lacked them. — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, "Bodies Remodeled for a Life at Sea," 19 Apr. 2018 Hundreds of thousands of years is plenty of time for Darwinian natural selection to have changed Lystrosaurus. — John Hawks, WSJ, "‘Lamarck’s Revenge’ Review: Inheriting the Wrong Ideas," 16 Aug. 2018 The problem was that biologists had only loose ideas about how specific population structures might affect natural selection. — John Rennie, WIRED, "This Mutation Math Shows How Life Keeps on Evolving," 1 July 2018 For Charles Darwin, birds offered a window into the process of natural selection—and ultimately, evolution. — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, "What We Can Learn From a New Bird Tree of Life," 21 Apr. 2018 New tools from the field of synthetic biology could endow scientists with the frightening ability to design and manufacture maximally dangerous pathogens, leapfrogging natural selection. — R. Daniel Bressler, Vox, "“Designer bugs”: how the next pandemic might come from a lab," 6 Dec. 2018 Indeed, evading our awareness is something cognitive biases are precision-engineered by natural selection to do. — Robert Wright, WIRED, "Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought," 17 May 2018 Because the Star magnifies the effects of natural selection, the scientists labeled it an amplifier. — John Rennie, WIRED, "This Mutation Math Shows How Life Keeps on Evolving," 1 July 2018 This might be natural selection working at lightning speed, an example of survival of the fittest frogs. — The Washington Post, NOLA.com, "Some endangered frogs may be leaping back from extinction," 17 May 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'natural selection.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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