Meaning & use
ontogenic
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Relating to ontogeny, the process by which an individual organism grows and develops from its earliest stage to maturity.
See it in a sentence
The researchers tracked ontogenic changes in the tadpole's body as it developed into a frog.
Ontogenic differences in skull shape make it hard to compare a juvenile and an adult skeleton.
A note on using this word
Ontogenic is often paired and sometimes confused with "phylogenetic," which instead describes the evolutionary history of a species as a whole.
Words with a similar meaning
ontogeneticdevelopmental
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