That form of development of an individual organism in which in which ancestral characteristics occurring during its evolution are conserved by heredity and reproduced, sometimes transiently, in the course of individual development; original simple descent; -- distinguished from
cenogenesis (
kenogenesis or
coenogenesis), in which the mode of individual development has been modified so that the evolutionary process had become obscured. Sometimes, in zoölogy, the term is applied to the abrupt metamorphosis of insects, crustaceans, etc. See also the note under
recapitulation. [
1913 Webster]