BioConcepts

paedomorphosisPädomorphose (ger.)

• The retention of juvenile or larval characteristics in a reproductively mature organism; esp. the appearance in an adult organism of the juvenile or larval characteristics of an ancestral form. (OED)
  category development see also paedomorphism

  1922

  In other articles I propose to deal with the origin and significance of larval forms, and to draw attention to some further examples of the influence of larval characters upon adult organisation, to which I apply the term ‘Pædomorphosis’.

  Garstang, W. (1922). The theory of recapitulation. J. Linn. Soc. London (Zool.) 35, 81-101: 100.

  1962

  paedomorphosis in dicotyledonous woods

  Carlquist, S. (1962). A theory of paedomorphosis in dicotyledonous woods. Phytomorphol. 12, 30-45.

  1979

  Negative perturbations in growth rate and offset signal produce descendants whose morphology resembles juvenile stages in the ancestor. We call these forms, collectively, paedomorphs, and the retarding process which produces them paedomorphosis.

  Alberch, P., Gould, S.J., Oster, G.F. & Wake, D.B. (1979). Size and shape in ontogeny and phylogeny. Paleobiology 5, 296-317: 306.

  1982

  paedomorphosis The retention of juvenile characters of ancestral forms by adults, or later ontogenetic stages, of their descendants; superlarvation; paedomorphic, paedomorphism, pedomorphic, pedomorphism; cf. neoteny, progenesis.

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 178.