The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Hypomorphosis

a path of phylogenetic development of organisms leading to simplification of organization.

Hypomorphosis takes place in connection with a change in the environment that was appropriate for the ontogeny of an animal’s precursors (for example, neoteny in aquatic caudate amphibians), with simplification of its life conditions (for example, in parasitism), or with decrease in body size (for example, in rotifers and tardigrades). Hypomorphosis is a variety of morphophysiological regression.

REFERENCE

Shmal’gauzen, I. I. Puti i zakonomernosti evoliutsionnogo protses-sa. Moscow-Leningrad, 1940.

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References in periodicals archive

More recently, Reilly (1997) rejected the terms "neoteny" and "progenesis" and proposed to use "deceleration" and "hypomorphosis," instead, in an effort to reduce confusion about the actual meanings of these terms.

Heterochrony in Plant Evolutionary Studies through the Twentieth Century

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