BioConcepts

adaptive characterscaractéristiques d'adaptation (fr.); Anpassungsmerkmale (ger.)

• Characters of organisms that were produced as an (adaptive) response of the organism to the conditions of its environment.  
  category analogy

  1838

  ornithologists have written less on their differential characters, than on those which they have conceived to link the different families together; which latter being often very superficial, that is to say, consisting merely in a slight resemblance in the shape of the beak, while everything else is overlooked, as in the instances of a tit, (Falcunculus),being placed with the shrikes, a fringillidous bird, (Calamophilus, which is most nearly allied to Estrilda), with the tits, &c. &c., the overweening consequence which has been attached to such unimportant adaptive characters, has induced an amount of confusion which requires no little study to disentangle

  Blyth, E. (1838). Outlines of a new arrangement of insessorial birds. Magazine of Natural History 2, 314-319: 318.

  1838

  It was the especial province of the zoologist to distinguish, in every instance, the intrinsical from the simply adaptive characters of animals ; to disentangle and discriminate affinity from analogy

  Blyth, E. (1838). On the geographical distribution of birds. The Naturalist 3, 169-174: 171.

  1870

  Anpassungsmerkmale

  Dub, J. (1870). Kurze Darstellung der Lehre Darwin’s über die Entstehung der Arten der Organismen: 247.

  1876

  Anpassungsmerkmale

  Seidlitz, G. (1876). Beiträge zur Descendenz-Theorie: 131; vgl. 75; 83.

  1884

  [Es] zeigen ganz allgemein im Pflanzenreiche die Anpassungsmkermale, welche durch die äusseren Reizeinflüsse hervorgerufen werden und mit Rücksicht darauf ihre Nützlichkeit erproben, eine geringere Permanenz als die Organisationsmerkmale, welche durch die selbständige Umbildung des Idioplasmas bedingt werden, und welche in Uebereinstimmung mit ihrem Ursprung sich den äusseren Verhältnissen gegenüber gleichgültig verhalten.

  Nägeli, C. von (1884). Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre: 327.