noun
definition
A soft-bodied invertebrate of the phylum Mollusca, typically with a hard shell of one or more pieces.
definition
A weak-willed person.
Examples of mollusc in a Sentence
A medusa with a remarkable habit of life is Mnestra parasites, which is parasitic on the pelagic mollusc Phyllirrhoe, attaching itself to the host by its subumbral surface; its tentacles, no longer required for obtaining food, have become rudimentary.
Thus in the primitive mollusc the mantle-cavity contains a symmetrical group of structures at the posterior end of the body, and this group of structures is called the pallial complex.
It is held by some morphologists that the mollusc body is unsegmented, and therefore is to be compared to a single segment of a Chaetopod or Arthropod.
He regarded it as a mollusc, being no doubt deceived by the slug-like appearance given by the antennae.
In most cases this is a mollusc, and the larvae bore their way into the most diverse organs, often accumulating to such an extent as to give a distinctly orange colour to an otherwise colourless tissue, and to cause the demolition of particular structures e.g.
This circlet of gill-lamellae led Cuvier to class the limpets as Cyclobranchiata, and, by erroneous identification of them with the series of metamerically repeated ctenidia of Chiton, to associate the latter mollusc with the former.
This organ has, without reason, been supposed to represent the second ctenidium of the typical mollusc, which it cannot do on account of its position.
The mollusc itself is often eaten, and dried for consumption in China and Japan.
Similarly Karl Hoffmann of Wiirzburg wasted his appreciations of the newer schools of developmental biology in fanciful notions of human diseases as reversions to normal stages of lower animals; scrofula being for him a reversion to the insect, rickets to the mollusc, epilepsy to the oscillaria, and so forth.
The cercaria swims freely for a time and either encysts directly on grass or weeds or it enters a second host which may be another mollusc, an insect, crustacean or fish, and then encysts.
The ciliated larva escapes from the egg into the water and enters an intermediate host (leech, mollusc, arthropod, batrachian or fish) where it undergoes a metamorphosis into a second stage in which most of the adult organs are present.
It presents a characteristic feature in its mollusc fauna, which contains many species not found in the neighbouring regions, and only found in the Alpine region.
It was present in the ancestral mollusc, occurs in nearly all archaic types, and is only absent in the most specialized forms, in which it has evidently been lost; these forms are certain Neomeniomorpha, all the Lamellibranchia, various degenerate Gastropoda, and the Cirrhoteuthidae among Cephalopods.
So far the young mollusc has not reached a definitely molluscan stage of Xviji.
They invariably disappear before the adult stage is reached, but their presence in the larva is evidence that the ancestral mollusc possessed a pair of true nephridia quite distinct from the coelomic excretory organs, which are so characteristic of existing forms in the adult condition.
Mollusca, and it is possible to construct a diagrammatic mollusc, as was first done by Lankester, which will possess these primitive features.
The Cephalopoda can be derived without much difficulty from the schematic Mollusc, if we assume that some metameric repetition of organs has occurred, as explained above in reference to the coelom.
The most important theoretical question concerning the Amphineura is how far do they represent the original condition of the ancestral mollusc?
The Pliocene deposits contain a mollusc fauna more arctic than that which exists at the present time, indicating probably that the connexion between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans was broader than it is now.
To this he added the account of Thule (which he placed six days' voyage north of Britain) and the adjoining regions, in which there was no longer any distinction between air, earth and sea, but a kind of mixture of all three, resembling the gelatinous mollusc known as pulmo marinus, which rendered all navigation and progress in any other mode alike impossible.
That pagurids must have the usually soft pleon or abdomen protected by the shell of a mollusc is now known to be subject to a multitude of exceptions.
The advantage that this group has derived from the adoption of mollusc xvrr.
The mollusc reciprocates by throwing off its embryos on the parent fish, in the skin of which they remain encysted for some time, the period of reproduction of the fish and mussel coinciding.
Harting informed the present writer that the bird seems to lay its head sideways on the ground, and then, grasping the limpet's shell close to the rock between the mandibles, use them as scissor-blades to cut off the mollusc from its sticking-place.
The Yellow Sandstone contains Archanodon, the oldest known fresh-water mollusc, and plant-remains; the Coomhola Grits are marine, and are sometimes regarded as Carboniferous, sometimes as uppermost Devonian.
Still, Lake Baikal has a seal (Phoca vitulina, Phoca baikalensis of Dybowski) quite akin to the seals of Spitsbergen, marine sponges, polychaetes, a marine mollusc (ancilodoris), and some marine gammarids.