How to Use natural selection in a Sentence

natural selection

noun
  • What both authors agree on is that life has evolved through natural selection.
    — Andrew Crumey, WSJ, 2 Oct. 2020
  • And that’s when natural selection kicks in and the tree of life starts adding shoots and branches.
    — National Geographic, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Why, then, didn’t natural selection prune them away?
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 31 May 2026
  • 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
  • But there are other forces at work, often at odds with natural selection.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 May 2024
  • In this case, perhaps a kind of natural selection has triumphed once again.
    — Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 22 May 2023
  • Hopefully, one day, natural selection will take care of it for good.
    — Mirel Zaman, refinery29.com, 15 Mar. 2021
  • Viruses do not just shape the human genome through natural selection, though.
    — The Economist, 20 Aug. 2020
  • But things can be different if the new allele has natural selection on its side.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 24 Sep. 2020
  • No idea could compete with blood and soil, with natural selection and the evolution of the species.
    — Elliot Ackerman, WIRED, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Why would a bird select for this, outside of natural selection?
    — Quanta Magazine, 21 Aug. 2025
  • In a harsh twist of natural selection, storks condemn their weakest chicks to death by throwing them from the nest.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
  • In truth, jobs and people find each other through a process closer to natural selection.
    — Dave Winsborough, Forbes.com, 10 Sep. 2025
  • If a design works, natural selection won’t try to fix what clearly isn’t broken.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 7 Jan. 2026
  • What if natural selection was acting on body size only, and brain size was just a passenger?
    — Paul Manger, Quartz Africa, 28 June 2019
  • But this mismatch is a daunting problem for natural selection to solve.
    — Lee Alan Dugatkin, Scientific American, 14 May 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
  • By way of death, natural selection kicks the less-than-ideal genes out of the population.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 18 May 2018
  • These are not random mixes or the products of natural selection.
    — Amanda Schupak, CNN, 3 Feb. 2024
  • Usually, patterns of natural selection take a long time to emerge.
    — Popular Science, 29 Feb. 2024
  • The mole has arrived, through natural selection, at exactly that point.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 20 May 2026
  • The Losos group discovered instead that storms can be agents of natural selection.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 30 July 2020
  • 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
  • And yet, natural selection seems to maintain the system in working order.
    — Elie Dolgin, Scientific American, 17 Jan. 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
  • The theory of natural selection persevered, and the lengthy record of our ancient roots began to fill out.
    — Laura Poppick, Rolling Stone, 30 June 2025
  • Since workers don't breed, natural selection is acting on them indirectly to improve the colony's health as a whole.
    — Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Dec. 2021
  • 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

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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