Acquired characteristics

Acquired characteristics, modifications in an organism resulting from interaction with its environment. In 1801 Jean Baptise Lamarck proposed an evolutionary theory in which the inheritance of acquired characteristics provided the mechanism for species divergence. In later editions of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin moved toward accepting this explanation along with that of natural selection, but eventually the Lamarckian mechanism was entirely discounted. Geneticists currently believe that inheritance is determined by reproductive cells.