Natural selection is a central concept of evolution. The English biologist Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, and is sometimes called the survival of the fittest. Darwin chose the name as an analogy with artificial selection (selective breeding).

Natural selection is the process where organisms with favorable traits are more likely to reproduce. In doing so, they pass on these traits to the next generation. Over time this process allows organisms to adapt to their environment. This is because the frequency of genes for favourable traits increases in the population.