Question

What is natural selection?

Answer 1

natural selection is the survival of the fittest as chosen by nature. I believe this was discovered by Charles Darwin, look him up he was a very interesting man in science history

Answer 2

Looks like someone chose genetics as her elective for this year.

Natural selection is the theory that nature will weed out the un-fit organisms by either natural forces or organism competition.

Answer 3

To add, natural selection wasn't so much "discovered" by Charles Darwin as it was proposed and made famous by him. It is one of several mechanisms that drive the evolutionary process.

Answer 4

Just to rephrase what others have said here, natural selection refers to the natural phenomenon that those organisms that are most well adapted for survival will produce more offspring (and therefore pass on their environmental advantage to their offspring) that those less suited for survival, therefore resulting in an accumulation of organisms that are well adapted for survival in their current environment.

And example of this is giraffes - early giraffes did not have very long necks. However, as a result of a random genetic mutation very few giraffes had a slightly longer neck than other members of their species. This allowed them to reach more food sources (higher branches and leaves), thus giving them a survival advantage over other giraffes and allowing them to produce more offspring, eventually resulting in all giraffes being of the slightly longer neck variety. Once again a random genetic variation occurred causing few giraffes to have an even longer neck, and thus the cycle continued.