Natural selection
differential survival and reproduction of individuals in nature due to differences in phenotype; a key mechanism of evolution
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in the relative fitness endowed on them by their own particular complement of observable characteristics. It is a key law or mechanism of evolution which changes the heritable traits characteristic of a population or species over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.
For Darwin, natural selection was a law or principle which resulted from three different kinds of process: inheritance, including the transmission of heritable material from parent to offspring and its development (ontogeny) in the offspring; variation, which partly resulted from an organism's own agency; and the struggle for existence, which included both competition between organisms and cooperation or 'mutual aid' (particularly in 'social' plants and social animals).
Variation of traits, both genotypic and phenotypic, exists within all populations of organisms. However, some traits are more likely to facilitate survival and reproductive success. Thus, these traits are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. These traits can also become more common within a population if the environment that favours these traits remains fixed. If new traits become more favoured due to changes in a specific niche, microevolution occurs. If new traits become more favoured due to changes in the broader environment, macroevolution occurs.
“Natural selection” enters the record as differential survival and reproduction of individuals in nature due to differences in phenotype; a key mechanism of evolution. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Natural, selection and differential can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q43478. The Library of Congress control number is sh85090264. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Natural selection” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.