NATURAL SELECTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does natural selection mean? 

• NATURAL SELECTION (noun)
  The noun NATURAL SELECTION has 1 sense:

1. a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment

  Familiarity information: NATURAL SELECTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NATURAL SELECTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural processes

Synonyms:

natural selection; selection; survival; survival of the fittest

Hypernyms ("natural selection" is a kind of...):

action; activity; natural action; natural process (a process existing in or produced by nature (rather than by the intent of human beings))

 Context examples 

Also regarded as the father of evolution, Darwin studied these birds to come up with his theory of natural selection.

(Researchers report rapid formation of new bird species in Galápagos islands, Wikinews)

The researchers found that there are many areas of the genome that define each species, and these are maintained by natural selection, which weeds out the foreign genes.

(Butterflies are genetically wired to choose a mate that looks just like them, University of Cambridge)

However, divergent selection — variation in natural selection across populations — may also be the reason that different populations have differing noses.

(Nose Form Was Shaped by Climate, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

What’s remarkable about the honeyguide-human relationship is that it involves free-living wild animals whose interactions with humans have probably evolved through natural selection, probably over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, says Spottiswoode, a specialist in bird behavioural ecology in Africa.

(How humans and wild Honeyguide birds call each other to help, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

All the eighteen species of finches in the archipelago had a common ancestor, from which they evolved in the course of time due to natural selection.

(Researchers report rapid formation of new bird species in Galápagos islands, Wikinews)

The researchers found that the width of the nostrils and the base of the nose measurements differed across populations more than could be accounted for by genetic drift, indicating a role for natural selection in the evolution of nose shape in humans.

(Nose Form Was Shaped by Climate, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)