exapted


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ex·ap·ta·tion

 (ĕg′zăp-tā′shən)
n. Biology
The utilization of a structure or feature for a function other than that for which it was developed through natural selection.


ex·ap′ted adj.
ex·ap′tive adj.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

exapted

(ɛkˈsæptɪd; ɪɡˈzæptɪd) or

exaptive

adj
(of a particular feature) having a function that was not brought about by natural selection(of a particular feature) having a function different to that for which it evolved
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
References in periodicals archive ?
IPPs were allowed free repatriation of equity and were exapted from most of the taxes
According to the definition originally proposed by Gould and his colleageus, (84,85) PEG10 and PEG11/ RTL1 are very good examples of "exapted" (domesticated) genes that exhibit novel functions that are different from the original functions in the original organisms.
In silico analyses of LOC646736 transcripts showed that exon 2 has been exapted from a primate-specific Alu short interspersed element (SINE).
They see fungibility not as an attribute of resources but as the de facto side effect of a lemonade strategy of exaptation in the face of unexpected contingencies; for these entrepreneurs, attributes arising due to adaptation within particular environments at particular points of time may then be exapted to other environments at a future date (Dew, Sarasvathy, & Venkataraman, 2004).
So far as the system as a whole or the American people are concerned, horizontal judicial supremacy may well be a beautiful spandrel, an institution that evolved to serve the needs of national political actors and that has been "exapted" to hold those very actors accountable to the law.
The evolutionary inference, that the scyphozoan morphology was exceedingly well-adapted or exapted for predation on diverse taxa through geologic time, has been complemented by the taxonomic and ecological literature, which together describe modern scyphomedusan diversity as comprising relatively few, often widespread, trophic generalists (e.g., Aral, 1997; Mianzan and Cornelius, 1999; Richardson et al., 2009).
Since Miller grants that the arts and other forms of mental activity, once they got started, might have been co-opted or "exapted" for adaptively functional purposes, his argument reduces itself to an argument about the original function of the arts.