noun
definition
Any organism, being or robot with six legs.
definition
An arthropod with six feet; a member of subphylum Hexapoda.
definition
An insect.
Examples of hexapods in a Sentence
With the dawn of the Mesozoic epoch we reach Hexapods that can be unhesitatingly referred to existing orders.
From the Trias of Colorado, Scudder has described cockroaches intermediate between their Carboniferous precursors and their present-day descendants, while the existence of endopterygotous Hexapods is shown by the remains of Coleoptera of several families.
The post-embryonic growth of Hexapods with or without metamorphosis is accompanied in most cases by the acquisition of wings.
Ray's "Insects" comprised the Arachnids, Crustacea, Myriapoda and Annelida, in addition to the Hexapods.
In the specialized ommatidia of the compound eyes of Crustacea and Hexapods the rhabdom is an important structure.'
It has been considered by them as proving that Limulus, in spite of all its special agreements with Scorpio (which, however, have scarcely been appreciated by the writers in question), really belongs to the Crustacean line of descent, whilst Scorpio, by possessing Malpighian tubes, is declared to be unmistakably tied together with the other Arachnida to the tracheate Arthropods, the Hexapods, Diplopods, and Chilopods, which all possess Malpighian tubes.
Lamarck, however, appears not to have insisted on this name Hexapoda, and so the class of Pterygote Hexapods came to retain the group-name Insecta, which is, historically or etymologically, no more appropriate to them than it is to the classes Crustacea and Arachnida.
It was conceived by Huxley, among others, that the same number of cephalic somites would be found to be characteristic of all the diverse classes of Arthropoda, and that the somites, not only of the head but of the various regions of the body, could be closely compared in their numerical sequence in classes so distinct as the Hexapods, Crustaceans and Arachnids.
The endopodite may be retained as a small segmented palp at the side of the gnathobase or disappear (mandible of Crustacea, Chilopoda and Hexapods).
But they seem to point to a community of origin of Hexapods and Crustacea in regard to the complicated ommatidia of the compound eye, and to a certain isolation of the Arachnida, which are, however, traceable, so far as the eyes are concerned, to a distant common origin with Crustacea and Hexapoda through the very simple compound eyes (monostichous, polymeniscous) of Limulus.
In the Hexapods and Chilopods, and the Arachnids (usually), they form tree-like branching structures, and their finest branches are finer than any blood-capillary, actually in some cases penetrating a single cell and supplying it with gaseous oxygen.
This name is applied to the numerous fine caecal tubes of noticeable length developed from the proctodaeal invert of ectodermal origin in Hexapods.
The Malpighian tubes of Hexapods are outgrowths of the proctodaeum, but those of Scorpion and the Amphipod Crustacea are part of the metenteron or endodermal gut, though originating near its junction with the proctodaeum.
Some Hexapods which are very primitive in other respects happen to be also Apterous, but this cannot be held to prove that the possession of wings is not a primitive character of Hexapods (compare the case of the Struthious Birds).
They appear to be serial equivalents (homogenous meromes) of the tracheal gills, which develop in a like position on the abdominal segments of some aquatic Hexapods.
When the facile tendency of Arthropoda to develop tracheal air-tubes is admitted, it becomes probable that the tracheae of Hexapods do not all belong to one original system, but may be accounted for by new developments within the group. Whether the primitive tracheal system of Hexapoda was a closed one or open by serial stigmata in every somite remains at present doubtful, but the intimate relation of the system to the wings and tracheal gills cannot be overlooked.
Simple monomeniscous eyes are also present in many Hexapods.
There is, however, good embryological evidence in some Hexapods of the existence of a seventh somite, the supra-lingual, occurring between the somite of the mandibles and the somite of the first maxillae (4).
Many larval Hexapods might be defined in similar general terms, unlike as they are to their parents in most points of detail.
The Devonian rocks of Canada (New Brunswick) have yielded several fossils which are undoubtedly wings of Hexapods.
In the Carboniferous strata (Coal measures) remains of Hexapods become numerous and quite indisputable.