Clones satisfying the term condition

The term condition considered here is the property of an operation ? that holds iff ? and all of its variants obtained by permuting the variables satisfy (for all x,y,u₁,…v₁,…)$\text{?(x,u}{}_1\text{,…) = ?(x,v}{}_1\text{…)??(y,u}{}_1\text{,…) = ?(y,v)}{}_1\text{,…)}$. Clones consisting entirely of operations satisfying this term condition are called TC clones; algebras whose clone of term operations is a TC clone are called TC algebras; varieties such that every algebra in the variety is a TC algebra are called TC varieties. The paper is a systematic study of these notions, giving primary attention to operations and algebras on finite base sets, and to varieties generated by finite algebras. It is proved, among other results, that the number of n-ary TC operations on a k-element set is logarithmically asymptotic to k^(k?1)n when n increases without bound and k is held fixed; that there exist only countably many TC clones on any finite set; that the maximal TC clones on a finite set are finite in number (for each set). Some necessary conditions for an algebra to generate a TC variety are given, also some sufficient conditions.