Definitions for natural selection
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
nat′ural selec′tion(n.)
the process in nature by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as changes in climate or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus perpetuating those traits in succeeding generations.
Category: Biology
Origin of natural selection:
1855–1860
Princeton's WordNet
survival, survival of the fittest, natural selection, selection(noun)
a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms best adapted to the environment
Wiktionary
natural selection(Noun)
A process by which heritable traits conferring survival and reproductive advantage to individuals, or related individuals, tend to be passed on to succeeding generations and become more frequent in a population, whereas other less favourable traits tend to become eliminated.
natural selection(Noun)
A process in which individual organisms or phenotypes that possess favourable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce: the differential survival and reproduction of phenotypes.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
Natural Selection
name given by Darwin to the survival of certain plants and animals that are fitted, and the decease contemporaneously of certain others that are not fitted, to a new environment.
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