Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A change or set of changes in the timing or duration of an organism's ontogenetic development compared with an ancestral species, resulting in morphological differences between ancestor and descendant.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In biology, a displacement, with reference to their order of appearance in time, of members of a genetically connected series, as of animal forms or organs; a disarrangement of the true ontogenetic sequence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biology the variation in ontogeny of individuals of a species that gives rise to evolution

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[hetero– + Greek khronos, time + –y.]

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Examples

  • Altermodernism can be defined as that moment when it became possible for us to produce something that made sense starting from an assumed heterochrony, that is, from a vision of human history as constituted of multiple temporalities, disdaining the nostalgia for the avant-garde and indeed for any kind of era - a positive vision of chaos and complexity

    Museum Blogs 2009

  • The evolutionary origin and elaboration of sociality in the aculeate Hymenoptera: Maternal effects, sib-social effects, and heterochrony.

    SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011

  • It was based on developmental sequences, and treated heterochrony as a sequence change.

    Iconoclasts of Evolution: Haeckel, Behe, Wells & the Ontogeny of a Fraud - The Panda's Thumb 2005

  • He suggested an interesting explanation of heterochrony in development, according to which the premature or retarded appearance of organs in ontogeny stands in close relation with the time of their entering upon functional activity.

    Form and Function A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology

  • We find that embryos at the tailbud stage - thought to correspond to a conserved stage - show variations in form due to allometry, heterochrony, and differences in body plan and somite number.

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • We find that embryos at the tailbud stage - thought to correspond to a conserved stage - show variations in form due to allometry, heterochrony, and differences in body plan and somite number.

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • Wise then makes a confusing argument about how the decreasing age of attainment of sexual maturity indicates that lifespan is decreasing (even though it's not) and argues that humans have experienced heterochrony in developmental rates.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2008

  • (social groups, species), or at different phases of the life cycle (evolution-development), and how other embryological and evolutionary phenomena (heterochrony, neoteny) may influence or impact evolution.

    ScreenTalk 2009

  • (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans.

    CogDogBlog 2009

  • (social groups, species), or at different phases of the life cycle (evolution-development), and how other embryological and evolutionary phenomena (heterochrony, neoteny) may influence or impact evolution.

    ScreenTalk 2009

Comments

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  • This term has nothing to do with heterosexual politicians...or does it?

    March 2, 2011