∞ generated and posted on 2015.12.27 ∞
Organism change as a function of time particularly as measured in terms of generations.
| Descent with Modification describes the evolutionary changes that tend to occur within populations of organisms in the course of time. |
Descent with modification is change over the course passage of alleles as implicitly considered from generation to generation, that is, from parent to offspring. Note that since this is a passage of from individual to individual, it means that individuals are not themselves changing but instead that change occurs in the course of vertical inheritance or transmission.
"Descent" is used in the same sense as the term "descend", with "descent" a noun and "descend" a verb. "Modification" in turn refers to change, which can be viewed as changes in allele frequencies, though the older concept is instead one of change in morphology.
Descent with modification, in yet other words, is another way of defining evolution, though one that does not distinguish between Darwinian evolution and non-Darwinian evolution.