BioConcepts

functional adaptationadaptation fonctionnelle (fr.); funktionelle Anpassung (ger.)

• The state of usefulness of an organ for a certain function as a result of its use for this function in the past.
  category adaptation

  1833

  Very early in life [of girls working in factories], from ten to fourteen years, the breasts are often found large and firm, and highly sensitive, whilst at a later period—at a period indeed when they should shew the greatest activity and vital energy—when in fact they have children to support from them, they are soft, flaccid, pendulous, and very unirritable —both states giving the most decisive proofs of perversion in the usual functional adaptation [...] of parts

  Gaskell, P. (1833). The Manufacturing Population of England, its Moral, social, and Physical Conditions, and the Changes which have Arisen from the Use of the Steam Machinery: 165.

  1864

  To say that functional adaptation to conditions, produces either evolution in general, or the irregularities of evolution, is to raise the further question—why is there a functional adaptation to conditions?—why do use and disuse generate appropriate changes of structure?

  Spencer, H. (1864). The Principles of Biology, vol. 1: 409.

  1874

  See that bird with bill curving upward. A beautiful functional adaptation it is—for with it small stones are turned over so deftly, and thus its food, the sheltered worms, are exposed. It is the avocet

  Lockwood, S. (1874). About crabs. Popular Science Monthly 1874 (June), 191-198: 191.

  1881

  Kurz gefasst ist unter „functioneller Anpassung" von mir verstanden: „die Anpassung an die Function durch Ausübung derselben". Diese Anpassung erstreckt sich auf die Grösse, Gestalt, Structur und Qualität der Organe

  Roux, W. (1881). Der züchtende Kampf der Theile oder die „Theilauslese“ im Organismus (Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Entwickelungsmechanik der Organismen, 2 Bde., I, 135-422): 157.