endopterygote

[ en-doh-ter-i-goht ]

adjective

1. belonging or pertaining to the superorder Endopterygota, comprising the insects that undergo complete metamorphosis.

noun

1. an endopterygote insect.

Word History and Origins

Origin of endopterygote¹

First recorded in 1925–30, endopterygote is from the New Latin word Endopterygota a group of insects. See endo-, pterygote

Example Sentences

Further, although the wing-rudiments appear externally in an early instar of an exopterygotous insect, the earliest instars are wingless and wing-rudiments have been previously developing beneath the cuticle, growing however outwards, not inwards as in the larva of an endopterygote.

From Project Gutenberg

We would trace the Hymenoptera back therefore to the primitive endopterygote stock.

From Project Gutenberg

The change from an exopterygote to an endopterygote development could, therefore, be brought about by the gradual postponement to a later and later instar of the appearance of the wing-rudiments outside the body, and their correlated growth inwards as imaginal disks.

From Project Gutenberg

In comparing the transformations of endopterygote insects of different orders, it is worthy of notice that in some cases all the members of an order have larvae remarkably constant in their main structural features, while in others there is great variety of larval form within the order.

From Project Gutenberg

The pupa of the higher insects almost certainly corresponds with the may-fly's sub-imago, and the facts just recalled as to remnants of pupal activity suggest that in the ancestors of endopterygote insects what is now the pupal instar was represented by an active nymphal or sub-imaginal stage, possibly indeed by more than one stage, as Packard and other writers have stated that pupae of bees and wasps undergo two or three moults before the final exposure of the imago.

From Project Gutenberg