Broodiness is more common in some chicken breeds than others, indicating it an inherited character.

"Any detectable variation of an inherited character.

In a narrow definition it can be used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood, i.e. inherited character.

It had been different in the time of faerie, of course, when magic was as much a part of a creature's inherited character as the makeup of his blood and tissue.

Another potential problem is that if "ten other independently inherited characters had been subject to selection of the same intensity as that for colour, only , or one in 1024, of the original genotype would have survived."

Using techniques of genetic complementation, Macrae paired nonluminescent monocaryons with luminescent ones, and concluded that luminosity in P. stipticus is an inherited character, and governed by a single pair of alleles in which luminosity was dominant over nonluminosity.