If we say by natural selection alone, we should expect to find the multitudinous species differing from one another in respect of features presenting well-marked adaptive meanings; yet this is precisely what we do not find.
They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline of experience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and therefore in the correlated habits of thought.
In the Upper Cretaceous there was an exuberant "radiation" of mammals, adaptive to the conquest of all sorts of haunts, and this was vigorously continued in Tertiary times.
The Miocene was the mammalian Golden Age and there were crowning examples of what Osborn calls "adaptive radiation.
Such is the adaptive device--more reflex than reflective--which is called self-mutilation or autotomy.
The origin of adaptive variations gave him, at that time, little concern.
The environmental limits are narrow, then, within which the transformations of the organic system can take place that are associated with adaptive reactions.
This adaptive adjustment, moreover, is not wholly passive; is not a mere matter of the moulding of the organism by the environment.
Such an adaptive resemblance could not of course exist if it laid its eggs in the nests of more than one species, and it is certainly a circumstance eminently favourable to preservation.
In other words, Dulus and Phainoptila have remained unspecialized, in contrast to the waxwings in which adaptive changes fitting them for a perching habit have taken place.
As adaptive radiation took place in the class Aves, some birds, the Bombycillidae included, became more and more adapted for an arboreal, and eventually an aerial habitat, with consequent loss of saltatorial and running ability.
It has generally been assumed that the nomadic waxwings originated under boreal conditions, in their present breeding range, and that they did not undergo much adaptive radiation but remained genetically homogeneous.
Once adaptive mutations have occurred, if genetic isolation from one source or another accompanies it, a new population different from the parental stock may become established.
Major adaptivelevels in the evolution of the actinopterygian feeding mechanism.
Broadly speaking, the adaptive effects ascribed to use-inheritance coincide with the effects of natural selection.
Natural selection would usually favour these adaptive changes, and they would also have been aided by an artificial selection which is often unconscious or indirect.
In the evolution, then, of modern locomotives, differences have come about, even though the common ancestor is one single type; and these differences have an adaptive value to certain specific conditions.
The great length of this part is obviously an adaptive character, enabling the animal to browse upon the softer leafy shoots of shrubs and trees.
The puff fish can take in a great amount of water, when disturbed, so as to become too large to be swallowed by some of its foes, illustrating another adaptive modification for self-defense.
Indeed we have learned this in the case of vestigial and rudimentary structures of higher forms like whales, and now we find that entire animals may degenerate as a result of changes no less adaptive than progressive modifications.
In them, pale soil and low relative humidity are important passive factors of selection that give adaptive value to the pale colors of pelage of both infernatis and handleyi.
The pallor of the former, that lives on generally paler soils, presumably is of adaptive value.
Lamarck knows no drug, nor operation, that will medicine one organism into another, and expects the results of adaptive effort to be so gradual as to be only perceptible when accumulated in the course of many generations.
This can be interpreted as a measure of the frequency of adaptive plasticity versus adaptive conservatism; five of the 24 plottings show a plastic character, 19 a conservative.
Adaptive relicts of morphological nature have been many times documented, but characteristics associated with seasonality and timing schedules have not.
There are 26 plottings that show temporal consistency, all of which may be taken as evidence of adaptive (or relictual) conservatism of the species in question.
This conservatism may result from the historic genetic "burden" of the species; that is to say, previous adaptive peaks may in part be evident in the matrix of contemporary adaptation.
The real affinities of all organic beings, in contradistinction to their adaptive resemblances, are due to inheritance or community of descent.
We are least likely in the modifications of these organs to mistake a merely adaptive for an essential character.
We can understand, on the above views, the very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or adaptive resemblances.
These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration of these resemblances we shall recur.
Apart, however, from the adaptive changes to which special reference was made in the previous chapter, the differences which larvae present are those of gradation, not of direction.
A clue to the difficulty may, I think, be found in the distinction between developmental and adaptive changes; to which I have called attention in a previous chapter.
As argued in my previous work, all mental processes of an adaptive kind are, in their last resort, processes of classification: they consist in discriminating between differences and resemblances.
Now, in considering this question we must first remember to what an extraordinarily high level of adaptive ideation the purely receptual life of brutes is able to carry them.
And similarly with regard to animals, it is sufficiently evident from such facts as those already instanced, that the imagery on which their adaptive action depends is in large measure generic.
In these instances we have the third species of the Adaptive Power, in connexion with an apparently moral end--with an end in the proper sense of the word.
Here the Adaptive Power co-exists with a purpose apparently voluntary, and the action seems neither pre-determined by the organization of the animal, nor in any direct reference to his own preservation, or to the continuance of his race.
The erect position of man is an adaptive character, just as are the various characters referable to aquatic life in the seals, which, notwithstanding these, are ranked as a mere family of the carnivores.
But recent investigations have shown that these, too, have an adaptive significance (Häcker).
The behaviour itself is the adaptive application of the energies of the organism; it is called forth by some form of presentation or stimulation brought to bear on the organism by the environment.
The predominant survival of (a) entails the survival of the adaptivevariations which are inherited.
From a phylogenetic point of view, the conclusion is allowable that the precocious forms are secondary, and have arisen by adaptive modification from the primitive serotinous stem.
Mollie was too clever and adaptive to have missed the lessons of the last few weeks, and the change of expression was even more marked.
Ruth was an adaptive creature, tremendously influenced by the surroundings of the moment.
For each species, measured and calculated values for the first four variables were converted into dimensionless numbers and used to derive a composite score that represented its adaptive unit.
These five variables are functionally interrelated, and have co-evolved in each species to form a unique adaptive unit that regulates body temperature and energy balance throughout each annual cycle.
The first four variables were converted into normalized dimensionless numbers, which were used to derive a composite score that represented each species' adaptive unit.
Because these variables are interrelated with respect to regulation of body temperature and energy balance, they have co-evolved in each species to form an adaptive unit.
As an adaptive unit, these traits provide Procyon lotor with the physiological and behavioral flexibility required to take full advantage of a wide range of climates and habitats, and its distribution verifies that it has done so.
The intricate patterns of origin and of insertion seem to remain almost the same throughout the order in spite of adaptive radiation which has occurred.
It is now recognized that the bill is a highlyadaptive structure and that it frequently shows convergence and parallelism.
These artificial groupings are the result of early work which gave chief attention to readily adaptive external structures.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "adaptive" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
