Concept
Natural selection
The process by which heritable traits that improve survival and reproduction become more common over time.
Updated Oct 11, 2026 · 1 min read · 3 connections
- Proposed
- 1858
- By
- Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
Principle
Selection requires variation among individuals, inheritance of that variation, and differences in reproductive success. Together they produce adaptation, one of the main drivers of evolution.
Beyond biology
Selection is distinct from genetic drift, which changes populations by chance and is modeled with probability theory. The same logic inspired genetic algorithms in computing.