neoteny
/niːˈɒt(ə)ni
/noun [mass noun] Zoology
1The retention of juvenile features in the adult animal. Also called paedomorphosis.This is a classic example of an evolutionary phenomenon known as neoteny - the retention of larval or juvenile features in mature adults....
- In fact Neo, as he has been named, suffers from a condition known as neoteny, where juvenile characteristics, like gills, are retained into adulthood.
- Among early codiacrinids adaptive forms evolved initially through both neoteny and progenesis.
1.1The sexual maturity of an animal while it is still in a mainly larval state, as in the axolotl. Also called paedogenesis.The acquisition of sexual maturity by an animal while still in the larval stage is a process that goes under the name neoteny....
- Facultative neoteny also occurs in some species of true salamanders.
Derivatives
neotenic
- However, the young man can take advantage of the fact that older men are also of the generation before, who are less neotenic and look more like apes.
- Direct-developing and normal biphasic frogs have slightly larger genomes, followed by biphasic, then direct-developing, and finally facultatively and then obligately neotenic salamanders.
- Sermonti therefore argues that neotenic organisms - in which juvenile traits persist into adulthood, e.g. gills in adult salamanders - must be archaic, because their features appear earlier in development.
neotenous
- The literature suggest that the frequency of neotenous newts in a population could be as low as one in 1, 500.
- Reisinger had suggested in 1960 that Xenoturbella might be derived from a neotenous deuterostome larva based on features of the nervous system, the enteropneust-like epidermis and the spermatozoa.
- Thomas suggested that the noetiid ligament evolved from a ligament with outer chevrons only, as in Anadara antiquata, or the neotenous ligament of limopsids.
Origin
Late 19th century: from German Neotenie, from Greek neos 'new' (in the sense 'juvenile') + teinein 'extend'.