From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishnatural selectionˌnatural seˈlection noun [uncountable] technical HBSthe process by which only plants and animals that are naturally suitable for life in their environment will continue to live and breed, while all others will die out → evolution → survival of the fittest at survival(2)
Examples from the Corpus
natural selection• There is an obvious analogy between operant conditioning and evolution by natural selection.• Within its limits, natural selection is an illuminating idea.• The better the host defends, the more natural selection will promote the parasites that can overcome the offense.• So natural selection pushes the population even further towards the Always Defect extreme.• Dawkins assumes that natural selection will do this selecting job.• Nabokov, however, denied that natural selection can explain it.• It is dangerous to suppose that natural selection wants this or that.• The difficulty with natural selection which Taylor raises repeatedly is that it explains evolution by chance. 