How to Use natural selection in a Sentence

natural selection

noun
Definition of natural selectionnext
  • 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
  • That left Armstead as the most natural selection to play the weak side.
    — Andy Benoit, SI.com, 22 June 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
  • 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
  • No idea could compete with blood and soil, with natural selection and the evolution of the species.
    — Elliot Ackerman, WIRED, 8 Feb. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • By way of death, natural selection kicks the less-than-ideal genes out of the population.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 18 May 2018
  • 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
  • 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 might be natural selection working at lightning speed, an example of survival of the fittest frogs.
    — The Washington Post, NOLA.com, 17 May 2018
  • So a better way of removing glucose from the blood and into storage cells will be favoured by natural selection.
    — The Economist, 7 June 2019
  • Hundreds of thousands of years is plenty of time for Darwinian natural selection to have changed Lystrosaurus.
    — John Hawks, WSJ, 16 Aug. 2018
  • That’s the beauty of robotics—engineers don’t have to follow the rules of natural selection.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 12 May 2021
  • This hints that celibacy can evolve by natural selection.
    — Ruth MacE and Alberto Micheletti, Ars Technica, 5 Sep. 2022
  • With this variation on Flemish carbonnade, beer would be a natural selection: a Belgian ale, a brown ale, or a dry stout or porter.
    — Melissa Clark, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2018
  • This happens through the ever-present driving forces of seedling variation and natural selection.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 19 Jan. 2024
  • Darwinian evolution by natural selection happens through changes to the genetic composition of populations whose members vary in their traits.
    — Ferris Jabr, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 July 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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