OVIPOSITOR

Ovipositor

The ovipositor is an organ used by some animals for oviposition, i.e., the laying of eggs. It consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages formed to transmit the egg, to prepare a place for it, and to place it properly. In some of the insects the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but in many parasitic species it is a piercing organ as well. It is used by grasshoppers to force a burrow in the earth to receive the eggs and by cicadas to pierce the wood of twigs for a similar purpose. Both long-horned grasshoppers and sawflies cut the tissues of plants by means of the ovipositor. None of these examples is quite as remarkable as the wasp ...

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ovipositor

Noun

  1. A tubular protruding organ for laying eggs.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: ovipositor
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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