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anagenesis

Definitions

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

  • noun An evolutionary process that involves change from an ancestor species to a descendant species without the branching or splitting off of new taxa.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Evolution by means of the acquiring of characters and of increasing complexity and differentiation.

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

  • noun The evolution of a new species by the large scale change in gene frequency so that the new species replaces the old rather than branching to produce an additional species.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

ana- + -genesis

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  • nuxiy commented on the word anagenesis

    "The evolution of one species out of another by succession."

    - SNPA

    March 21, 2009

  • MaryW commented on the word anagenesis

    It staggers me to contemplate the implications of our new lifestyle. We now live predominantly in a niche that was unknown only six thousand years ago! Generations of city people no long have the interest to live in the country and may truly struggle to survive doing so. The social customs, diet, climate, modes of communication, and transportation in the city would be as foreign to our ancient ancestors as theirs would be to us. We have evolved into a new ecological role with cultural barriers to our rural legacy. Evolutionary biologists might consider us well along the process called "anagenesis"—the evolution of a new species from its ancestors that results from the gradual accumulation of isolating differences over time. Certainly we are already culturally distinct from our ancestors, but most biologists would not consider this adequate to proclaim that we are truly a species apart from ancestral Homo sapiens. They would require more lasting distinctions that make our DNA incompatible with that of our ancestors.
    John M. Marzluff, Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2014), p. 7

    February 10, 2016