natural selection
43
3.9
- noun
- /ˈnæʧərəl sɪˈklɛkʃən/
- Specialized
:
selección natural
- It's a commonly-held belief that life evolved gradually by natural selection.
- theory of natural selection
- evolution by natural selection
- Darwinian natural selection
Variation does happen by chance, but natural selection is not random.
- Variation does happen by chance, but natural selection is not random.
- But that we are, we are optimized through natural selection for sexual reproduction.
- Well, what does natural selection select for?
- And then that can lead to evolution by natural selection.
- And so now you have a mechanism for evolution, for natural selection.
- But it's actually evolved and shaped by natural selection.
- And of course, evolution of viruses is classic evolution by natural selection.
- I like the fact that we do keep ourselves, keep, keep each other alive longer than natural selection would wish.
- So heart disease, Alzheimer's, those things all happen so late that it didn't get weeded out by natural selection.
- So that's what causes some genes to survive and other genes not to survive, and that is natural selection.
- So now think about think about how natural selection would have selected for people who were attuned to the negative response of others.
- You can define success based on your evolutionary natural selection success.
- No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work.
Examples
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Variation does happen by chance, but natural selection is not random.
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In the wild, natural selection favors animals that can camouflage themselves from predators.
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But that being said, there are lots of ways that natural selection is just going to keep changing us.
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Without it, the laws of natural selection could not work.
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It's called the process of natural selection.
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So all of the conditions for natural selection on height are present in this room.
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Well, what does natural selection select for?
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We had prevailed here, not because of science, but through natural selection.
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So this is a a pattern of local adaptation shaped by natural selection over the course of millions of years.
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What he meant was that natural selection doesn't produce perfection; it produces traits that are good enough.
Academic text (2011)
Synonyms
98
3.7
The process where living things with useful traits survive and reproduce more
15
5.1
Only animals and plants best suited to their environment survive and reproduce
Antonyms
- Specialized
Human actions decide which animals or plants live and reproduce rather than nature
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally transparent: 'natural' (by nature) modifies 'selection' (the process of choosing), so a learner can infer 'selection that occurs in nature' — i.e., organisms being selected by natural forces. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'selección natural') and follows standard adjective+noun combination, so a B1 learner who knows the parts can grasp the basic meaning even if they lack detailed evolutionary knowledge.
Etymology
Natural selection comes from the idea that natural forces 'select' winners and the word selection means choosing who stays: nature lets animals and plants with helpful traits survive and have more babies while others die out. That's why the term means 'the process where nature chooses which animals or plants survive and have more offspring'.