Term for distinguishing characteristics that are inherited

In humans, eye color is an example of an inherited characteristic: an individual might inherit the "brown-eye trait" from one of the parents. Inherited traits are controlled by genes and the complete set of genes within an organism's genome is called its genotype.

Lamarckian inheritance, also known as "Neo-Lamarckism", is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime