Word Finder - larvae

definition

An early stage of growth for some insects and amphibians, in which after hatching from their egg, insects are wingless and resemble a caterpillar or grub, and amphibians lack limbs and resemble fish.

definition

An animal in the aforementioned stage.

definition

A form of a recently born or hatched animal that is quite different from its adult stage.

The larvae have soft, white bodies and, with very few exceptions, no legs.

The larvae are stout and soft-skinned, with short legs in correlation with their burrowing habit.

The eggs and larvae of the fire-flies are luminous as well as the perfect beetles.

The Staph y linid larvae are typically campodeiform.

Two very small families of aquatic beetles seem to stand at the base of the series, the Amphizoidae, whose larvae are broad and well armoured with FIG.

Beetles and larvae are frequently carnivorous in habit, hunting for small insects under stones, or pursuing the soft-skinned grubs of beetles and flies that bore in woody stems or succulent roots.

The beetles are hairy and their larvae well-armoured and often predaceous.

Aquatic larvae with distinct maxillulae, breathing dissolved air by abdominal tracheal gills.

Besides Anopheles, two species of Culex, C. penicillaris and C. pipiens, are also accused of transmitting the larvae.

The distribution of many groups of beetles is restricted in correspondence with their habits; the Cerambycidae (longhorns), whose larvae are wood-borers, are absent from timberless regions, and most abundant in the great tropical forests.

Some of the scavengers, like the burying beetles, inter the bodies of small vertebrates to supply food for themselves and their larvae, or, like the "sacred" beetle of Egypt, collect for the same purpose stores of dung.

The root-feeding larvae of the cockchafer and allied members of the Scarabaeidae have a ridged area on the mandible, which is scraped by teeth on the maxillae, apparently forming a stridulating organ.

The larvae of Lucanidae live within the wood of trees, and may take three or four years to attain their full growth.

Ganglbauer (1892) divides the whole order into two sub-orders only, the Caraboidea (the Adephaga of Sharp and the older writers) and the Cantharidoidea (including all other beetles), since the larvae of Caraboidea have five-segmented, two-clawed legs, while those of all other beetles have legs with four segments and a single claw.

The larvae have a somewhat swollen abdomen, which is protected by bristle-bearing tubercles.

The larvae of the beautiful, elongate, metallic Donaciae live in the roots and stems of aquatic plants, obtaining thence both food and air.

Metamorphosis in Diptera is complete; the larvae are utterly different from the perfect insects in appearance, and, although varying greatly in outward form, are usually footless grubs; those of the Muscidae are generally known as maggots.

In these forms the pregnant female, instead of laying eggs, as Diptera usually do, or even producing a number of minute living larvae, gives birth at one time but to a single larva, which is retained within the oviduct of the mother until adult, and assumes the pupal state immediately on extrusion.

These workers then take on themselves the labour of the colony, some collecting food, which they transfer to their comrades within the nest whose duty is to tend and feed the larvae.

The Solenopsis can make its way into the territory of the Formica to steal the larvae which serve it as food, but the Formica is too large to pursue the thief when it returns to its own galleries.

The larvae of these are usually spoken of as " false caterpillars," on account of their resemblance to the larvae of a moth.

Sawfly larvae can at once be recognized by the curious positions they assume, and by the number of pro-legs, which exceeds ten.

Another group of Hymenoptera occasionally causes much harm in fir plantations, namely, the Siricidae or wood-wasps, whose larvae burrow into the trunks of the trees and thus kill them.

For all exposed sawfly larvae hellebore washes are most fatal, but they must not be used over ripe or ripening fruit, as the hellebore is poisonous.

Fruit suffers much from the larvae of the Geometridae, the socalled "looper-larvae" or " canker-worms."

In many years quite half the apple crop is lost in England owing to the larvae destroying the fruit.

Sugar-canes suffer from the sugar cane borer (Diatioca sacchari) in the West Indies; tobacco from the larvae of hawk moths (Sphingidae) in America; corn and grass from various Lepidopterous pests all over the world.

The female lays her eggs beneath the scaly covering, from which hatch out little active six-legged larvae, which wander about and soon begin to form a new scale.

The series of paired spiracles on most of the trunk-segments is well displayed, as a rule, in terrestrial larvae - caterpillars and the grubs of most beetles, for example.

The campodeiform larvae of many Coleoptera are indeed far more primitive than the neuropteran larvae, and suggest to us that the Coleoptera - modified as their wing-structure has become - arose very early from the primitive metabolous stock.

The eruciform larva of the Orthorrhapha leads on to the headless vermiform maggot of the Cyclorrhapha, and in the latter sub-order we find metamorphosis carried to its extreme point, the muscid flies being the most highly specialized of all the Hexapoda as regards structure, while their maggots are the most degraded of all insect larvae.

As a commercial product spider-silk has been found to be equal, if not superior, to the best silk spun by lepidopterous larvae; but the cannibalistic propensities of spiders, making it impossible to keep more than one in a single receptacle, coupled with the difficulty of getting them to spin freely in a confined space, have hitherto prevented the silk being used on any extensive scale for textile fabrics.

Now, Coccinellidae (ladybirds) are known to be highly distasteful to most insectivorous mammals and birds, and snails would be quite unfit food for the Pompilid or Ichneumonid larvae, so that the reason for the mimicry in these cases is also perfectly clear.

The " cotton stainers," various species of Dysdercus, are widely distributed, occurring for example in America, the West Indies, Africa, India, &c. The larvae suck the sap from the young bolls and seeds, causing shrivelling and reduction in quantity of fibre.

If they fall on pasture land or fodder of any kind and are eaten by any herbivorous animal, such as a hare, rabbit, horse, sheep or ox, the active embryos or larvae are set free in the alimentary canal of the new host.

These larvae are minute oval creatures with a comparatively short apically fringed caudal prolongation and furnished with two pairs of short two-clawed processes, which may represent the limbs of anthropods and possibly the two pairs of legs found in Acari of the family Eriophyidae.

In the event of the host escaping being killed and eaten it is believed that some of these larvae wander about or ultimately make their way to the exterior, possibly through the bronchi; nevertheless it seems to be certain that they can only reach sexual maturity in the nasal passages of some carnivorous animal, and the chance of attaining this environment is afforded when the viscera of the host are devoured by some flesh-eating mammal.

The size of the animals varies greatly, from forms a few millimetres in length to Gigantorhynchus gigas, which measures from 10 to 65 cms. The adults live in great numbers in the alimentary canal of some vertebrate, usually fish, the larvae are as a rule encysted in the body cavity of some invertebrate, most often an insect or crustacean, more rarely a small fish.

This animal spends most of its time burrowing in the sand in search of insects and their larvae, but occasionally makes its appearance on the surface.

Spiders, caterpillars and grasshoppers are, he said, stung in their chief nerve-centres, in consequence of which the victims are not killed outright, but rendered motionless and continue to live in this paralysed condition for several weeks, being thus available as food for the larvae when these are hatched.

But the Peckhams' careful observations and experiments show that, with the American wasps, the victims stored in the nests are quite as often dead as alive; that those which are only paralysed live for a varying number of days, some more, some less; that wasp larvae thrive just as well on dead victims, sometimes dried up, sometimes undergoing decomposition, as on living and paralysed prey; that the nerve-centres are not stung with the supposed uniformity; and that in some cases paralysis, in others death, follows when the victims are stung in parts far removed from any nerve-centre.

Probably several months elapse before the young larvae are excluded.

Joly, the very young larvae have no breathing organs, and respiration is effected through the skin.

It is probable that some are carnivorous, either attacking other larvae or subsisting on more minute forms of animal life; but others perhaps feed more exclusively on vegetable matters of a low type, such as diatoms.

The Tornaria larva offers a certain similarity to larvae of Echinoderms (sea-urchins, star-fishes, and sea-cucumbers), and when first discovered was so described.

About this stage the larvae leave the broodpouch, which is a lateral or median cavity in the body of the female, and lead a free swimming life in the ocean.

I t may, however, be pointed out that Brachiopods seem to belong to that class of animal which commences life as a larva with three segments, and that tri-segmented larvae have been found now in several of the larger groups.

Such cases are the habits of " shamming dead " and the combined posturing and colour peculiarities of certain caterpillars (Lepidopterous larvae) which cause them to resemble dead twigs or similar surrounding objects.

The Elasmobranchs swallow infected molluscs or fish; pike and trout devour smaller fry; birds pick up sticklebacks, insects and worms which contain Cestode larvae; and man lays himself open to infection by eating the uncooked or partially prepared flesh of many animals.

The evolution of the cysticercoid, cysticercus and other forms of larvae is a varied adaptive phenomenon.