differentiation

plural differentiations

1. The act or process of differentiating (generally, without a specialized sense).
   1. countableuncountableThe act of treating one thing as distinct from another, or of creating such a distinction; of separating a class of things into categories; of describing a thing by illustrating how it is different from something else.

      The level of kinesthetic differentiations was established for every individual by using device called kinesthesiometer which allows testing in aquatic environment

      2011, Zukow Walery, Skaliy Aleksander, Napierala Marek, State, prospects and development of rescue, physical culture and sports in the XXI century, →ISBN, page 63

   2. countableuncountableThe process of developing distinct components.
2. countableuncountablebiologyThe process by which the components of multicellular life (cells, organs, etc.) are produced and acquire function, as when a seed develops the root and stem, and the initial stem develops the leaf, branches, and flower buds.
3. countableuncountableevolutionbiologyThe evolutionary process by which one taxonomic group (species, genus, variety, etc.) becomes distinct from another, or acquires distinct features; the result of such a process: distinctness.

   1 more example

   Any hope that the pierines would help to define “the level at which r-K phenomena should be sought has been dashed: apparently species groups (or subgenera, or splitters' genera) are r- or K-selected in the holarctic, whereas in Tatochila the same amount of differentiation is found among populations in a complex in which the process of speciation has not yet been completed.

   2012, Fritz Taylor, The Evolution of Insect Life Cycles, page 156

4. countableuncountablegeographyThe process of separation of cooling magma into various rock types.
5. countableuncountablecalculusThe process of applying the derivative operator to a function; of calculating a function's derivative.

   1 more example

   The integration and differentiation of vital function on the one hand, and the preparation and composition of food-material on the other hand form — as we will become fully aware further on — the two great divisions in the subject-matter of the science of organization, divisions corresponding to the fundamental biplicity of all advanced organization, its animal and its vegetative life.

   1878, Edmund Montgomery, “Monera, and the problem of life”, in The Popular Science Monthly, volume XIII, page 680