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Acquired characteristics, by definition, are characteristics that are gained by an organism after birth as a result of external influences or the organism's own activities which change its structure or function and cannot be inherited.
Lamarck argued, as part of his theory of heredity, that a blacksmith's sons inherit the strong muscles he acquires from his work. [1]Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, [2] is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime.
In humans, eye color is an example of an inherited characteristic: an individual might inherit the "brown-eye trait" from one of the parents. [1] Inherited traits are controlled by genes and the complete set of genes within an organism's genome is called its genotype. [2]
The idea that such characteristics cannot be inherited is associated with a distorted understanding of the principle formulated by August Weismann, according to which somatic cells cannot transmit information to germ cells. In fact, Weisman admitted the possibility of environmental influence on the substance of heredity. [76]
Darwin produced an unsuccessful theory he called pangenesis to try to explain how acquired characteristics could be inherited. In the 1880s August Weismann's experiments indicated that changes from use and disuse could not be inherited, and Lamarckism gradually fell from favour. [22]
Genetic traits located on gonosomes sometimes show specific non-Mendelian inheritance patterns. Individuals can develop a recessive trait in the phenotype dependent on their sex—for example, colour blindness and haemophilia (see gonosomal inheritances ).
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Eye color is an example of a (physical) phenotypic trait. A phenotypic trait, [1] [2] simply trait, or character state [3] [4] is a distinct variant of a phenotypic characteristic of an organism; it may be either inherited or determined environmentally, but typically occurs as a combination of the two. [5]