artificial selection

American  

noun

1. a process in the breeding of animals and in the cultivation of plants by which the breeder chooses to perpetuate only those forms having certain desirable inheritable characteristics.

---

artificial selection Scientific  

1. Modification of a species by human intervention so that certain desirable traits are represented in successive generations. The different breeds of domestic dogs and the large ears of maize corn are products of artificial selection.

2. Compare natural selection

---

artificial selection Cultural  

1. The breeding of plants and animals to produce desirable traits. Organisms with the desired traits, such as size or taste, are artificially mated or cross-pollinated with organisms with similar desired traits. (Compare natural selection.)

---

Compare meaning

How does artificial-selection compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• natural selection vs. artificial selection

Example Sentences

The team used a population of T. castaneum that had undergone artificial selection for death-feigning duration for more than 40 generations.

From Science Daily • Oct. 2, 2023

Each breed produces a winner, representing the best of what artificial selection can create from the descendants of wolves.

From Reuters • May 10, 2023

But modern livestock farming has involved millennia of artificial selection and is far from what most people would consider natural.

From Salon • Apr. 10, 2023

Darwin used artificial selection as a springboard to introduce and support the theory of natural selection.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

Those principles of crop development by artificial selection still serve as our most understandable model of the origin of species by natural selection.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond