Natural selection

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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...

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