Command and General Staff College (CGSC) 1001 Practice Test

The main idea is distinguishing ways change can be passed from one generation to the next. Genetic, taught, and imitated are all channels through which traits or information can be transmitted: genes are inherited, knowledge can be taught, and behaviors can be learned by observation.

Natural selection, by contrast, is a mechanism that changes a population over time. It doesn’t transmit a trait itself from parent to offspring. Instead, it favors individuals with certain heritable traits, leading those traits to become more common in the population across generations. It reshapes frequencies of existing variation rather than acting as a direct transmission pathway for a trait.

So the process of natural selection is not a mode of transmitted change; it’s the evolutionary mechanism that produces long-term change in populations.