Word Finder - spines

definition

The series of bones situated at the back from the head to the pelvis of a person, or from the head to the tail of an animal; backbone, vertebral column.

definition

Something resembling a backbone, such as a ridge, or a long, central structure from which other structures radiate.

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A pointed, fairly rigid protuberance or needle-like structure on an animal, shell, or plant.

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The heartwood of trees.

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Courage or assertiveness.

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The stiffness of an arrow.

In all these families spines and glandular papillae may be super-added.

Having no spines to their fins, the Gadids used, in Cuvierian days, to be associated with the herrings, Salmonids, pike, &c., in the artificially-conceived order of Malacopterygians, or soft-finned bony fishes.

Males of the little water-bugs of the genus Corixa make a shrill chirping note by drawing a row of teeth on the flattened fore-foot across a group of spines on the haunch of the opposite leg.

The spines are mixed with long soft hairs.

The body is uniformly covered with granular scales, whilst the short, strong tail is armed with powerful spines disposed in whorls.

Among the ammonites the loss of power to coil the shell is one feature of racial old age, and in others old age is accompanied by closer coiling and loss of surface ornamentation, such as spines, ribs, spirals; while in other forms an arresting of variability precedes extinction.

Beecher (1856-1905) has pointed out (1898), many animals possessing hard parts tend toward the close of their racial history to produce a superfluity of dead matter, which accumulates in the form of spines among invertebrates, and of horns among the land vertebrates, reaching a maximum when the animals are really on the down-grade of development.

The spines and pods of the plant are often mixed with it.

The ventral fin is also elongated, and all the fins are destitute of spines.

The body is enveloped by a thick striated protective cuticle which is frequently raised into hooks or spines.

The external openings in the male are armed with a pair of hollowed spines.

In the allied genus Echinocereus, with 25 to 30 species in North and South America, the stems are short, branched or simple, divided into few or many ridges all armed with sharp, formidable spines.

The genus Atherura includes the brush-tailed porcupines which are much smaller animals, with long tails tipped with bundles of flattened spines.

The body-wall is highly muscular and, except in a few probably specialized cases, possesses chitinous spines, the setae, which are secreted by the ectoderm and are embedded in pits of the skin.

The " postabdomen," marked off by the two postabdominal setae, usually has teeth or spines, and ends in two denticulate or ciliate claws, or it may be rudimentary, as in Polyphemus.

These have the furcal branches broad, lamellar, with at least three pairs of strong spines or ungues.

The skin is devoid of ossifications, but large and numerous cutaneous spines are often present, especially on the head and on the tail.

Their scales are mixed with larger prominent spines, which in some species are particularly developed on the tail, and disposed in whorls.

In most species there are three circumvallate papillae at the base, and the apical portion is generally covered with small, thread-like papillae, some of which in the porcupines become greatly enlarged, forming toothed spines.

There are generally nineteen dorso-lumbar vertebrae (thirteen thoracic and six lumbar), the form of which varies in different genera; in the cursorial and leaping species the lumbar transverse processes are generally very long, and in the hares there are large compressed inferior spines, or hypapophyses.

In some cases there may be spines among the fur.

The spiny mice, Acornys (or Acanthomys), of Western Asia, Cyprus and Africa, take their name from the fur being almost entirely replaced by flattened spines, and are further distinguished by the rudimentary coronoid process of the lower jaw.

The Old World porcupines, constituting the family Hystricidae, are terrestrial, stoutly built rodents, with limbs of subequal length in front and behind, and the skin covered with strong spines.

In Atherura fasciculata of the Malay Peninsula the spines are flattened, and the tails long and scaly, with a tuft of compressed bristles.

It is frequently armed with spines, hooks or stylets, and is further complicated by the addition of a nutritive secretion (the prostate gland) which may open at its base or pass separately by a special duct to the exterior.

The almost spherical head is covered by a hood which can be retracted; it bears upon its side a number of sickle-shaped, chitinous hooks and one or more short rows of low 89 spines - both of these features are used in characterizing the various species.

The weevers are poisonous and the venom is concentrated principally in the six spines of the first dorsal fin.

These spines are sharp and connected by a black membrane which projects, when the fish is disturbed, as a danger singal, it is believed, above the surface of the sand in which the fishes lie hid awaiting prey.

The males are without these protective spines and are exposed to special dangers as they wander in search of the webs of the females.

A third species, the common sloe or blackthorn, P. spinosa, has stout spines; its flowers expand before the leaves; and its fruit is very rough to the taste, in which particulars it differs from the two preceding.

About 700 species of Carboniferous fish have been described largely from teeth, spines and dermal ossicles.

But the way in which they usually diverge just over and in front of the eye has suggested the more probable idea, that they serve to guard these organs from thorns and spines while hunting for fallen fruits among the tangled thickets of rattans and other spiny plants.

The exospore often bears spines or warts, or is variously sculptured, and the character of the markings is often of value for the distinction of genera or higher groups.

The species are small trees or shrubs, armed with sharp, straight, or hooked spines, having alternate leaves, and fruits which are in most of the species edible, and have an agreeable acid taste; this is especially the case with those of the two species mentioned above.

The plants often bear spines, especially those growing in arid districts in Australia or tropical and South Africa.

As the leaves unfold from the centre of the rosette the impression of the marginal spines is very conspicuous on the still erect younger leaves.

The Scotch fir is a very variable tree, and certain varieties have acquired a higher reputation for the qualities of their timber than others; among those most prized by foresters is the one called the Braemar pine, the remaining fragments of the great wood in the Braemar district being chiefly composed of this kind; it is mainly distinguished by its shorter and more glaucous leaves and ovoid cones with blunt recurved spines, and especially by the early horizontal growth of its ultimately drooping boughs; of all varieties this is the most picturesque.

P. canariensis, which forms forests on the mountains of Grand Canary and Teneriffe, growing at an elevation of 6000 ft., also belongs to this group. The leaves are long, lax, and of a bright green tint; the cone-scales are without spines; the trunk attains a large size, and yields good and durable timber.

In most cases, however, the palp loses its exopodite and it often disappears altogether, while the coxal segment forms the body of the mandible, with a masticatory edge variously armed with teeth and spines.

In a few Entomostraca (some Phyllopoda and Ostracoda) the chitinous lining of the fore-gut develops spines and hairs which help to triturate and strain the food, and among the Ostracods there is occasionally (Bairdia) a more elaborate armature of toothed plates moved by muscles.

As in many other " pelagic " organisms, spines and processes from the surface of the body are often developed, which are probably less important as defensive organs than as aids to flotation.

Perhaps the most striking example is the zoea-like larva of the Sergestidae, known as Elaphocaris, which has an extraordinary armature of ramified spines.

In many bamboos they are long and spreading or drooping and copiously ramified, in others they are reduced to hooked spines.

In Setaria and allied genera the spikelet is subtended by an involucre of bristles or spines which represent sterile branches of the inflorescence.

Favosites hemisphaerica a number of radial spines, projecting into the cavity FIG.

As growth proceeds, and parent and bud become separated farther from one another, the edge-zone forms a sheet of soft tissue, X 0 3 bridging over the space between the two, and resting upon projecting spines of the corallum.

This margin is normally furnished with a perpendicular spine (virgella) and occasionally with two shorter lateral spines or lobes.

To render the organization of this creature perfect in relation to its wants, it is provided with three long filaments inserted along the middle of the head, which are, in fact, the detached and modified three first spines of the anterior dorsal fin.

Skeletal appendages are spines (radioles), pedicellariae, and, in some forms, minute sense-organs called sphaeridia.

Such hairs, either upon different parts of the skin of the same species, or in different species, assume very diverse forms and are of various sizes and degrees of rigidity - as seen in the fur of the mole, the bristles of the pig, and the spines of the hedgehog and porcupine, which are all modifications of the same structures.