The phrase "acquired traits" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in discussions about biology, genetics, or evolution, particularly when referring to characteristics that an organism develops during its lifetime and can be passed to offspring.
Example: "According to Lamarck's theory, acquired traits can be inherited, meaning that changes an organism undergoes during its life can be passed down to its descendants."
Alternatives: "learned characteristics" or "developed traits".
And though we can change both inherited and acquired traits, changing the inherited ones is usually harder.
All these beliefs, from inheritance of acquired traits to telegony, must now be classed as superstitions.
Not only Lamarck but also other 19th-century biologists, including Darwin, accepted the inheritance of acquired traits.
Unlike Hall, who was a Darwinian (a proponent of evolution by natural selection), Clements believed that new plant species arose through the inheritance of acquired traits.
Lamarck's ideas about the inheritability of acquired traits, for example, have latterly undergone a revival in epigenetics with the interest in the inheritance of acquired behavioral traits.
(One person who did imagine it is the French 18th-century naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who believed that acquired traits could be inherited. Twentieth-century Darwinian genetics dismissed Lamarckism as laughable, but because of epigenetics, Lamarckism is staging a comeback).
The noninheritance of acquired traits does not mean that the genes cannot be changed by environmental influences; X-rays and other mutagens certainly do change them, and the genotype of a population can be altered by selection.
If the traits to which Clark assigns primary importance in bringing about the Industrial Revolution are acquired traits, rather than inherited ones, there are many non-Darwinian mechanisms by which a society can impart them, ranging from schools and churches to legal institutions and informal social practices.
Researching a magazine article about deafness and the world of sign language led Mr Solomon to wonder how people with inherent or acquired traits might acquire identity from a peer group rather than their parents; this he calls horizontal identity.A friend whose daughter was a dwarf asked if she should bring up her child to consider herself as everyone else, only shorter?
Experimental taxonomy went on to become an important focus of ecological research, but it was Hall's Darwinian approach combining genetics, ecology, and taxonomy to study local adaptation, rather than Clements's adherence to the inheritance of acquired traits, that became widely accepted by ecologists after World War II.
acquired traits are inherited.
