How does natural selection cause helpful inherited traits to become more common?

Natural selection is the process by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring, thereby passing their genes to the next generation.12

This process causes helpful inherited traits to become more common through the following mechanism:

• Differential Success: Individuals possessing variations that increase their chances of survival and reproduction are more likely to leave descendants. Because these traits are heritable, they are preserved and multiplied in the population over generations.1
• Gene Frequency: As individuals with advantageous phenotypes reproduce more successfully, the frequency of the underlying genotypes increases within the population's gene pool.2
• Elimination of Harmful Traits: Conversely, variations that decrease an organism's fitness are less likely to be passed on, as their carriers leave few or no descendants, effectively filtering out less advantageous traits.1

Ultimately, natural selection acts as a filter that favors genetic success, ensuring that traits promoting survival and reproduction persist and proliferate over time.13