Which of the following describes the inheritance of traits from parents to offspring?

The branch of biology that studies how traits (like eye colour, blood group or height) are passed from parents to their children is genetics. It deals with genes, chromosomes and DNA — the material that carries the instructions handed down from parent to offspring.

The other choices describe related but different ideas. Evolution is the change in a whole population’s features over many generations, not the passing of traits from one parent to one child. Natural selection is the process where individuals with helpful traits survive and breed more, which is one cause of evolution. Adaptation is a feature that helps an organism survive in its environment.

All three depend on inheritance, but only genetics is the actual study and mechanism of inheritance itself, so genetics is the correct answer.