ontogeny
pronunciation
How to pronounce ontogeny in British English:
UK [ɒn'tɒdʒɪnɪ]
How to pronounce ontogeny in American English:
US [ɒn'tɒdʒɪnɪ]
-
- Noun:
- (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level
Word Origin
- ontogeny (n.)
- "development of an individual," 1872, from onto- + -geny. Related: Ontogenic; ontogenesis.
Example
- 1. The ontogeny of evolved psychological mechanisms .
- 2. Ontogeny , phylogeny , evolution and metamorphosis are all related , all different aspects of the same larger process .
- 3. The city is ontogeny and property in the center is becoming extra valuable .
- 4. Most modern biologists recognize numerous connections between ontogeny and phylogeny , explain them using evolutionary theory , or view them as supporting evidence for that theory .
- 5. This theory was often expressed as " ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny " , i.e. the development of an organism exactly mirrors the evolutionary development of the species .