The phrase "acquired character" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts discussing traits, qualities, or characteristics that have been developed or obtained over time.
Example: "Through years of experience and learning, she developed an acquired character that reflected resilience and wisdom."
Alternatives: "developed traits" or "gained characteristics".
Waddington, C. H. Genetic assimilation of an acquired character.
An acquired character is a response to the environment; an inherited character is produced by genes transmitted from parent to offspring (their expressions are often modified by environmental conditions).
Behaviors and abilities have both a genetic and an acquired character.
Psychological research shows that aspirations, or achievement motivation, can either bean inherited or acquired character trait, often formed at an early age (Quaglia &Cobb 1996), but are also a product of a stimulating socialenvironment (Collier 1994).
However, interestingly many of these students who thought that the acquired characters are not inherited did say that if organisms in each of the successive generations keep acquiring a character, the acquired character is inherited: the tail-cutting in each generation would "work in the end, given time" (p. 306).
Younger children in this study generally believed in the inheritance of a character abnormality acquired by animals during one's lifetime, and for them the chance of inheriting an acquired character is greater if the new character has been acquired by the animal at a younger age.
Unlike Darwin, however, Weismann firmly opposed the idea of inheritance of acquired characters.
Waddington, C. H. Canalization of development and the inheritance of acquired characters.
French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck invoked the idea of "the inheritance of acquired characters," not as an explanation for heredity but as a model for evolution.
Niche construction theory (NCT) emphasizes how acquired characters play an evolutionary role through transforming selective environments, a point germane to human evolution, where we see extensive environmental modification through cultural practices.
Our work was coming out at the same time as other studies demonstrating that RNA can be a bona fide vehicle for the transmission of acquired characters across generations.
