I learned a new word today: "exaptation". It was apparently coined by S.J. Gould in 1991, and is widely used in science:. "The utilization of a structure or feature for a function other than that for which it was
developed through natural selection. ex- + (ad)aptation.ex·apted..."
I found many sites about it on Internet. It might be fun to think of ways to use it. Some of the biology uses we all know. Perhaps there others we could think of.
why, we have forums right here at AWADtalk that have been exapted for uses other than those for which they were intended; to wit: AWAD in schools, Animal Safari, Loanwords in German... 8)
Dear tsuwm: would you accept the practice of using a big book as a door-stop an "exaptation"?
Most of the biology uses relate to some new and important ability.
My Newfie has exaptated himself into a lap dog.
>exaptated
bzzzzzzzt. this way lies adaptated! (and orientated)
orientated[BRISTLE !] GRR!!!
Holy cow, Dr. Bill--here's a sentence and a half, from one of the Google sites:
Indeed, the chief human evolution adaptation of increasing brain size was to provide humans with the neurological room for neural plasticity based exaptation to create novel learnt functions; first linked to dexterity, language and other hunter-gatherer transmitted skills, later in the human career for modern symbolic cognitions dependent upon notation and complex urban societies such as reading.Shanks, where are you?
Here's what I was looking for--an example:
For example, the bones of vertebrates (ancestrally for mineral storage) were exapted into locomotory structures by the ancestral sarcopterygians.Apparently, there are both physical and mental exaptations.
Oh, I just thought of one: when a part of the brain is injured or removed, sometimes what is left can take over new functions, expecially in young children.
Thanks, Dr. Bill.
Keep it up, Max, and I'll 'orientate' you, sir!
a function other than that for which it was
developed through natural selection.
A next generation CAT-scan device developed for medical purposes is now widely used in industry to scan manufactured goods of all kinds. Would you say this medical device has been "exapted" for industrial purposes, wwh? Many new inventions are modelled on designs that occur in nature. Velcro (modelled on the burrs that cling to hikers) is the leading example. Would you say these designs have been "exapted" by entrepreneurs to create new products? Or am I misusing the word "exapted" with these examples? When scientists start tinkering with strands of a patient's DNA to overcome a genetic defect which might lead one day to an illness, would that be an example of "reverse exaption", wwh?
Duct tape? Over 2,000,000 exaptations and still going strong. Great for hemming a skirt in a pinch... Much better than a stapler.
Thanks for this word, wwh! It explains my life!
DubDub
Exaptation: It might be fun to think of other ways to use it.
Linguistically. The former words,
"pre-adaptive" and "pre-adaptation", were exaptated into the more impressive sounding words, "exaptive" and "exaptation".
And while these new words seem clumsy and serve to obscure meaning, it behooves grant-gathering science to sound important when they mumble the holy rites of their particular trade.
Let us all beware of taking a word meant to serve a special need
and turning it into a pretentious buzz-word in places where
"adaptation" would do. My using the book as a door-stop is
a horrid example.
It seems to me to be a word which could be used quite widely, actually. It describes a process for which no other word exactly suits. "Adaptation" implies "gradual (and perhaps evolutionary) change", while exaptation seems to mean "deliberate (and rapid) change". You haven't adapted your book to make a doorstop. You didn't actually change the book, per se, at all. Only it's location and usage changed. Therefore, you could easily say that it's been exapted.
And what the hell's wrong with "orientated" anyway?
it behooves grant-gathering science to sound important when they mumble the holy rites of their particular trade.Hoo boy, you tell 'em, milum, my friend. Too true, too often.
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And what the hell's wrong with "orientated" anyway? What the hell's wrong with it, he asks. I'll tell you what the hell's wrong with it: it ain't no true word, that's what the hell's wrong with it! I can see that I am going to have to take BOTH you Kiwis firmly in hand...and never mind the defection to England--my wings are broad! Grr!
Jackie - do you use "adaption" or "adaptation"? I'm guessing the former.
Having studied biology for three years at Uni - much of which dealt with phyllogeny - this facet of evolution received plenty of air time.
FYI, Sydney Uni has three terms instead of the more common two semesters (well it did in the 70's anyway). If we used "adaption" in essays written in the second and third terms (the first term was a grace period) there was an automatic penalty of 5%. Our UK educated lecturers insisted the word was adaptation.
For this reason alone I use "orientate" - but am happy to change if there is an English English reason to do so.
stales
stales, that is some of the most specious reasoning I've seen... today.
here's the way it goes:
adapt >> adapted >> adaptation
orient >> oriented >> orientation
no adaption, no oriention; no adaptated, no orientated. QED2
Heard a good example in the context of my job....
Apparently one particular brand of satellite radio equipment is very popular with the locals in outback Africa. Not because the satellite service provides a voice and data link with the outside world, but because a power supply unit purloined from the system can power a whole range of appliances in the head men's houses!
stales
no adaption, no oriention; no adaptated, no orientated. QED2
tsuwm, brace yourself--I'm going to kiss you: smm-ack!
this way lies adaptated
Well, once Jeffy-the-Newfie parks it on your lap at Wordapalooza!, we'll see that the way it lies is flat.
I checked One Look Dictionaries, the Faster Finder, and here's the one and only entry given there (very fast):
SYLLABICATION: ex·ap·ta·tion
PRONUNCIATION: gzp-tshn I have no earthly idea...
NOUN: Biology The utilization of a structure or feature for a function other than that for which it was developed through natural selection.
ETYMOLOGY: ex– + (ad)aptation.
OTHER FORMS: ex·apted —ADJECTIVE
ex·aptive —ADJECTIVE
So, it's strictly biological, huh? But here we've gone and made exaptive linguistic use of it on this thread.
Also, notice in the above definition: no verb is included, at least by Bartleby.
Linguistically. The former words, "pre-adaptive" and "pre-adaptation", were exaptated into the more impressive sounding words, "exaptive" and "exaptation".
And while these new words seem clumsy and serve to obscure meaning, it behooves grant-gathering science to sound important when they mumble the holy rites of their particular trade.
Yeahbut©, exaptive and exaptation say what they mean, pre-adaptive and pre-adaptation don't. On a clumsy and obscurantist scale I would put pre-adapt well above exapt. If pre-adative and pre-adaptation meant anything at all, they would mean that they started out useless and only took on a use after being fully formed.
"Yeahbut," Faldage sez," expatation and exaptive say what they mean, pre-adaptive and pre-adaptation don't."
Oh my, said Alice to the Queen, Words mean just what you say they mean, nothing more and nothing less.
Still, at the risk of overstating the obvious, I offer you this line of reasoning, and just on the half-chance that it was the hyphens that confused you, I have eliminated them for your viewing pleasure.
Evolution is nothingbut adaptation. The term preadaptation only has meaning in the context of a subsequent adaptation. This is the way it has been used by paleontologists for forty years.
On the other hand, an "ex" prefix before adaptation would indicate that the prior adaptation, like an ex-wife, no longer exists. This is not the case in most adaptations. But
sometimes it is, so if limited it to those rare circumstances, I, for one, could see a use for exadaptation.
But why would anyone embrace the godawful, artificial, contracted, word "exaptation"?
Has paleontology suddenly developed an aversion to long words? Has someone uncovered a secret of evolution so sublime that it requires a whole new word to encompass the concept?
Can't our language have a logical continuity?
Milum.
Oh my, said Alice to the Queen, Words mean just what you say they mean, nothing more and nothing less.
Or Humpty Dumpty to Alice or whatever.
It's always nice if, when confronted by a new word, that one can deduce its meaning from the word itself as well as from the context. Ignoring the fact that ex-wives don't necessarily cease to exist or even cease to be wives, they merely cease to be one specific person's wife, the word adapt breaks up into ad- and apt, the individual elements meaning toward, to and to become fit respectively. Exapt (not exadapt) breaks up into ex- and apt, the ex- meaning out of, from and the apt as before. In the former we are stressing that something has moved toward a use for which it has become fit and in the latter that it has moved from some other use to become fit for a new use. Pre-adapt sounds like introducing a woman as your future ex-wife.
actually, Stephen J. Gould, arguably one of the most accessible evolutionary biologists of the day, had a rationale for coining the word exaptation. you could look it up, but it boils down to this: he wanted a term that would include pre-adaptation and another concept which has been called "spandrels".
Gould has written a paper suggesting that the word “spandrel” be used in biology to name features that arise without initial adaptive functions (e.g., those that are architectural by-products of development) but take on new functions later in evolution (Gould 1997).
Gould had earlier proposed, in a paper with Elizabeth Vrba (Gould and Vrba 1982), that we call traits that perform a current adaptive function but arose either for some other function or with no adaptive function at all [my emphasis] as “exaptations.” Thus both preadaptations and “spandrels” qualify as exaptations. The terminology may seem very nitpicky, but it forces us to think about the details of a trait and how it might have evolved, and it forces us to go beyond the mere creation of plausible stories in the study of adaptation. http://biosci264.bsd.uchicago.edu/adaptation.html
tsuwm, fascinating.
Your post crossthreads in that your link includes, among the many further links therein, a cameelious reference to Kipling’s “How the Camel Got Its Hump.”
However, I found that several of the links in it do not work. If you have any further information, please let me know; I find this subject of great interest. Thank you.
Here me n milum are having us a nice knock down drag out argument without neither of us knowing the least what we're talking about and you have to come in and spoil it with a bunch of moldy old facts!
Oh I don't know, Faldage, and so do you.
Milum.
Yer, nice one tsuwm. I had a close encounter of the lecturer kind with SJG and Lewontin, not to mention the spandrels in San Marco, myself many moons ago. Post-grad psychology paper. Yum. Not. From memory I got a B for the paper and couldn't work out how I did so well for so little effort ...