How to Use natural selection in a Sentence

natural selection

noun
Definition of natural selectionnext
  • In any case, scientists are not about to stand back and hope that natural selection saves the day.
    — The Washington Post, NOLA.com, 17 May 2018
  • That left Armstead as the most natural selection to play the weak side.
    — Andy Benoit, SI.com, 22 June 2018
  • Like natural selection, the shift will be subject to the forces of evolution; hitters will adapt or die.
    — Si.com Staff, SI.com, 14 May 2018
  • By way of death, natural selection kicks the less-than-ideal genes out of the population.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 18 May 2018
  • This might be natural selection working at lightning speed, an example of survival of the fittest frogs.
    — The Washington Post, NOLA.com, 17 May 2018
  • That makes the genes likely candidates for the evolutionary process known as natural selection.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 19 Apr. 2018
  • 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, 19 Apr. 2018
  • One can imagine, for places in desperate need of refreshment, a kind of natural selection for indigenous varieties, prized not just for their hardiness but for their restorative powers.
    — Patrick Comiskey, latimes.com, 15 May 2018
  • Having so many allows animals to generate variation, the driver of natural selection.
    — Darren Griffin, Scientific American, 6 June 2018
  • And that’s when natural selection kicks in and the tree of life starts adding shoots and branches.
    — National Geographic, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Put that ball in the arms of Pittman Sr.'s son and send him through the hole against fifth graders, and natural selection soon took its course.
    — Nate Atkins, IndyStar, 11 Oct. 2022
  • Llardo theorizes that over time, natural selection would have helped the Bajau, who have lived in the region for a thousand years, develop the genetic advantage.
    — National Geographic, 19 Apr. 2018
  • In that sense, members of the Class of ’13 are also survivors of the game’s natural selection.
    — Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY, 7 July 2023
  • No idea could compete with blood and soil, with natural selection and the evolution of the species.
    — Elliot Ackerman, WIRED, 8 Feb. 2024
  • What both authors agree on is that life has evolved through natural selection.
    — Andrew Crumey, WSJ, 2 Oct. 2020
  • There will be a natural selection between brands that are just doing PR moves and brands that stand for something.
    — Vogue, 3 Sep. 2020
  • Both used years of natural selection to find a naturally seedless strain, and do not employ GMOs to rid the fruit of seeds.
    — Chloe Sorvino, Forbes, 23 Mar. 2023
  • In this case, perhaps a kind of natural selection has triumphed once again.
    — Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 22 May 2023
  • No double-digit lead is big enough for the NBA’s natural selection.
    — Shayna Rubin, The Mercury News, 5 Jan. 2024
  • That is, there was no natural selection for these diseases.
    — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 27 July 2022
  • But things can be different if the new allele has natural selection on its side.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 24 Sep. 2020
  • Viruses do not just shape the human genome through natural selection, though.
    — The Economist, 20 Aug. 2020
  • The Losos group discovered instead that storms can be agents of natural selection.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 30 July 2020
  • Hopefully, one day, natural selection will take care of it for good.
    — Mirel Zaman, refinery29.com, 15 Mar. 2021
  • Most of it won’t matter in the least when natural selection throws up another disease with the properties of Covid-19.
    — WSJ, 1 Jan. 2021
  • And once the animal virus is in a human, natural selection will work in favour of mutations that make the virus successful.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 15 Nov. 2022
  • But there are other forces at work, often at odds with natural selection.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 May 2024
  • The problem was that biologists had only loose ideas about how specific population structures might affect natural selection.
    — John Rennie, WIRED, 1 July 2018
  • What if natural selection was acting on body size only, and brain size was just a passenger?
    — Paul Manger, Quartz Africa, 28 June 2019
  • This happens through the ever-present driving forces of seedling variation and natural selection.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 19 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'natural selection.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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