(social sciences) Colonization (and taking control) of populations or states by taking control of their agricultural resources and making them reliant on the colonizer's (bio)medical or agricultural (especially genetically-modified) supplies.
(biology) The doctrine that, in addition to the more gradual effects of evolution, huge catastrophic events shape the earth's flora and fauna by causing major die-offs which make way for the emergence of new organisms.
(biology) The principle that states that two species who are very similar, and compete for the same resources, cannot coexist indefinitely, as the one with the slight advantage will outperform the other and eventually drive it into extinction.
(biology) A written tool for identification of plants and animals. It is written as a sequence of paired questions, the choice of which determines the next pair of questions until a name or identification is reached.
(biology) In evolution, the process by which the manifold is compacted into the relatively simple and permanent; supposed to alternate with differentiation as an agent in species' development.
(biology, pseudoscience) The proposition that complex organs such as eyes and flagella must have started existing in their current form; i.e., that they cannot have evolved from previous, less complex stages.
(biology, historical) Lamarckism as revived, modified, and expounded by later biologists, especially as maintaining that the offspring inherits traits acquired by the parent from change of environment, use or disuse of parts, etc.
A former theory of evolution, claiming that the variation of characters in species is confined within certain limits due to internal and external factors.
(evolutionary theory) A selection effect driving evolution of an invasive species at the invasion front, that selects the fastest and furthest invaders to interbreed creating stronger and faster invaders, due to the invasion front preselecting the fastest invaders, concentrating these individuals and therefore selecting those traits that let them invade faster.
(historical) A theory of evolution, stating that that individual modifications supplement, protect, or screen organic characters and keep them alive until useful congenital variations arise and survive by natural selection, and that this process, combined in many cases with 'tradition', gives direction to evolution.
(biology) The characteristic of an organism that enables it to survive and reproduce better than other organisms in a population in a given environment; the basis for evolution by natural selection.
(evolutionary theory, historical) The fancied production of living organisms without previously existing parents from inorganic matter, or from decomposing organic matter, a notion which at one time had many supporters.
(biology, botany, zoology, countable) A plant or an animal, or part of a plant or animal, which has some peculiarity not usually seen in the species; an abnormal variety or growth. The term encompasses both mutants and organisms with non-genetic developmental abnormalities such as birth defects.
(evolutionary theory) A structure in an organism that has lost all or most of its original function in the course of evolution, such as human appendixes.
(biology) The typical form of an organism, strain, gene or characteristic as it occurs in nature
Note: Concept clusters like the one above are an experimental OneLook
feature. We've grouped words and phrases into thousands of clusters
based on a statistical analysis of how they are used in writing. Some
of the words and concepts may be vulgar or offensive. The names of the
clusters were written automatically and may not precisely describe
every word within the cluster; furthermore, the clusters may be
missing some entries that you'd normally associate with their
names. Click on a word to look it up on OneLook.