Word Finder - moult

definition

The process of shedding or losing a covering of fur, feathers or skin etc.

example

Some birds change colour during their winter moult.

definition

The skin or feathers cast off during the process of moulting.

synonyms

• exuvia

definition

To shed or lose a covering of hair or fur, feathers, skin, horns, etc, and replace it with a fresh one.

synonyms

• shed
• slough

definition

To shed in such a manner.

It bores through and enters the developing seed, where it undergoes a moult and becomes legless.

As growth proceeds the integument is periodically cast; and at the final moult the perfect winged insect appears.

He cites Groom's evidence that larvae obtained from the egg readily go through one moult in the aquarium, and the known fact that the last larval stage is.

Nymphs repeat the behaviour of the larvae, and finally moult into the adult, showing the generative orifice, which is the mark of maturity.

Its striated plumage also favours this view, as an evidence of permanent immaturity or generalization of form, since striped feathers are so often the earliest clothing of many of these birds, which only get rid of them at their first moult.

The antennae are long and thread-like, composed at first of few joints, but the number of these latter apparently increases at each moult.

After the first moult the difference between the sexes is shown by the hens inclining to yellowish-green, while the cocks become diversified by orange-yellow and red, their plumage finally deepening into a rich crimson-red, varied in places by a flamecolour.

Further, the gradual appearance and differentiation of the successive somites and appendages may be accelerated, so that comparatively great advances take place at a single moult.

He knew at least the earlier investigations of L'Herminier, and, though the work of Nitzsch, even if he had ever heard of it, must (through ignorance of the language in which it was written) have been to him a sealed book, he had followed out and extended the hints already given by Temminck as to the differences which various groups of birds display in their moult.

From thiscurious habitation the young mantids hang by threads till after their first moult (see Mantis).

Riley, who finds that the young larva, hatched from the egg laid on the pod, has three pairs of legs, and that these are lost after the moult that occurs when the grub has bored its way into the seed.

They moult five times, becoming with each change of skin darker in colour; in about three weeks they become adult and capable of laying parthenogenetic eggs.

Here it undergoes its fifth and last moult, and appears as a winged female, capable of reproducing parthenogenetically.

The female is drab, but shows the same white markings as the male, and the young males resemble the females until after the first autumn moult, when they gradually assume the plumage of their sex.

Certain races moult or cast their skin three times during their larval existence, but for the most part the silkworm moults four times - about the sixth, tenth, fifteenth and twenty-third days after hatching.

It invariably happens during the most active period of feeding, three or four days after the fourth moult up to the rising, and generally appears after a meal of coarse leaves, obtained from mulberries pruned the same year and growing in damp soil.

In the former case it contains numerous grains of sand which are introduced by the animal itself after each moult and which are supposed to act as otoliths.

After another moult the insect passes into the passive nymphal or " pupal " stage, during which it takes no food and rests in some safe hiding-place, such as the soil at the base of its food-plant or the hollow of a leaf-stalk.

After the second larval moult, he passes through a passive stage comparable to the pupa-stadium of an b insect, and during this stage, which occurs inside the root, the reproductive organs are perfected.

Carried to the bee's nest, it undergoes a moult, and becomes a fat-bodied grub, ready to lead a quiet life feeding on the bee's rich food-stores.

It often appears before or after the first moult, but it is only after the fourth that it appears in a more developed form.

The newly hatched insect closely resembles the parent, and the wing-rudiments appear externally on the second and third thoracic segments; but before the final moult the nymph remains quiescent, taking no food.

The triungulin searches for the eggs, and, after a moult, becomes changed into a soft-skinned tapering larva.

Clinging to her hairs they are carried to the nest, where they bore into the body of a bee or wasp larva, and after a moult become soft-skinned legless maggots.

Before a moult actually occurs the cuticle becomes separated from its connexion with the underlying hypodermis.

The sub-imago of the Ephemeroptera suggests that a moult, after the wings had become functional, was at one time general among the Hexapoda, and that the resting nymph of the Thysanoptera or the pupa of the Endopterygota represents a formerly active stage in the life-history.

It is only at the final moult that the sexual organs are mature, the two sexes being alike in the earlier stages of growth.

This final moult is effected soon after the insect's appearance in the winged form; the creature seeks a temporary resting-place, the pellicle splits down the back, and the now perfect insect comes forth, often differing very greatly in colours and markings from the condition in which it was only a few moments before.

Of particular zoological interest in this connexion is a Ceylonese genus Dyscritina, in which the cercopods are long, many-jointed and filiform during the early stages of growth, and only assume at the last moult the forcipate structure characteristic of the family.

In the case of the Norway hare, it has been stated that a general moult, including all the hairs and under fur, takes place and new white hairs are substituted.

In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen.