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Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents.
Epigenetic mechanisms. In biology, epigenetics is the study of heritable traits, or a stable change of cell function, that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. [1] The Greek prefix epi-(ἐπι-"over, outside of, around") in epigenetics implies features that are "on top of" or "in addition to" the traditional (DNA sequence based) genetic mechanism of inheritance. [2]
For example, in an aligned DNA sequence matrix, all of the A, G, C, T or implied gaps at a given nucleotide site are homologous in this way. Character state identity is the hypothesis that the particular condition in two or more taxa is "the same" as far as our character coding scheme is concerned.
Acquired characteristics, by definition, are characteristics that are gained by an organism after birth as a result of external influences or the organism's own activities which change its structure or function and cannot be inherited.
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritance of property and titles.
This glossary of biology terms is a list of definitions of fundamental terms and concepts used in biology, the study of life and of living organisms.It is intended as introductory material for novices; for more specific and technical definitions from sub-disciplines and related fields, see Glossary of cell biology, Glossary of genetics, Glossary of evolutionary biology, Glossary of ecology ...
Species that exhibit parental care after the birth of their offspring have the potential to overcome the sex differences in parental investment (the amount of energy that each parent contributes per offspring) and lead to a reversal in sex roles. [4] The following are examples of male mate choice (sex role reversal) across several taxa.
A taxis (from Ancient Greek τάξις (táxis) 'arrangement, order'; [1] pl.: taxes / ˈ t æ k s iː z /) [2] [3] [4] is the movement of an organism in response to a stimulus such as light or the presence of food.