The study looked at how different episodes of natural selection affect the overall lifetime selection in animals. By combining estimates of selection at different times, researchers found that the total quadratic selection depends not only on the sum of quadratic selection across episodes but also on the pattern of directional selection. In some cases, even if there is no net directional selection, there can still be strong stabilizing selection. This suggests that stabilizing selection may be more common than previously thought, especially when looking at the entire life cycle of an organism. The equations developed in the study can be easily applied to real data, as shown with both simulated and real-life examples.