Microevolution

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Small-scale changes in the history of life, such as changes in allele frequencies in a population (over a few generations); also known as change at or below the species level. countable, uncountable

    "“It basically hasn’t become this massive chewing and grinding machine that it becomes later,” Mr. Martin said. The change would have been the result of microevolution, or an evolutionary change occurring within a species."

  2. 2
    evolution resulting from small specific genetic changes that can lead to a new subspecies wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
macroevolution

Example

More examples

"“It basically hasn’t become this massive chewing and grinding machine that it becomes later,” Mr. Martin said. The change would have been the result of microevolution, or an evolutionary change occurring within a species."

Etymology

From micro- + evolution, coined by Robert Greenleaf Leavitt in 1909.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.