Natural selectionis a centralconceptofevolution. The English biologistCharles DarwinandAlfred Russel Wallace, and is sometimes called thesurvival of the fittest.Darwin chose the name as ananalogywithartificial selection(selective breeding).

Natural selection is the process whereorganismswith favorabletraitsare more likely to reproduce. In doing so, they pass on these traits to the nextgeneration. Over time this process allows organisms toadaptto theirenvironment. This is because thefrequencyofgenesfor favourable traits increases in the population.

Key points:

Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who proposed the theory of biological evolution by natural selection.

Darwin definedevolutionas "descent with modification," the idea that species change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor.

The mechanism that Darwin proposed for evolution isnatural selection. Because resources are limited in nature, organisms with heritable traits that favor survival and reproduction will tend to leave more offspring than their peers, causing the traits to increase in frequency over generations.

Natural selection causes populations to becomeadapted, or increasingly well-suited, to their environments over time. Natural selection depends on the environment and requires existing heritable variation in a group.