BioConcepts

descent with modificationAbstammung mit Veränderung (ger.)

• The transformation of animals, plants, and other living organisms into different forms by the accumulation of changes over successive generations; the transmutation of species; the origination or transformation ofan organism, organ, physiological process, biological molecule, etc., by such a series of changes.  
  category evolution see also evolution

  1859

  on the theory of descent with modification, the main facts with respect to the mutual affinities of the extinct forms of life to each other and to living forms, seem to me explained in a satisfactory manner

  Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species: 333.

  1860

  the aim of the philosophic Naturalist should be to determine how small a number of primitive types may be reasonably supposed to have given origin by the ordinary course of »descent with modification« to the vast multitude of diversified forms that have peopled the globe in the long succession of geological ages, and constitute its present Fauna and Flora

  Carpenter, W.B. (1860). Researches on the Foraminifera. Fourth and concluding series. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 150, 535-94: 585-6; cf. Proc. Roy. Soc. London 10, 506-10: 510.