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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ovipositor

Ovipositor \O`vi*pos"i*tor\, n. [L. ovum an egg + positor a placer, fr. ponere to place.] (Zo["o]l.) The organ with which many insects and some other animals deposit their eggs. Some ichneumon files have a long ovipositor fitted to pierce the eggs or larv[ae] of other insects, in order to lay their own eggs within the same.

Wiktionary
ovipositor

n. (context zoology English) A tubular protruding organ for laying eggs.

WordNet
ovipositor

n. egg-laying tubular structure at the end of the abdomen in many female insects and some fishes

Wikipedia
Ovipositor

The ovipositor is an organ used by some animals for the laying of eggs. In insects an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typically its form is adapted to functions such as transmitting the egg, preparing a place for it, and placing it properly. In some insects the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but in many parasitic species (primarily in wasps and other Hymenoptera) it is a piercing organ as well.

Grasshoppers use their ovipositors to force a burrow into the earth to receive the eggs. Cicadas pierce the wood of twigs with their ovipositors to insert the eggs. Sawflies slit the tissues of plants by means of the ovipositor and so do some species of long-horned grasshoppers. In the wasp genus Megarhyssa, the females have a slender ovipositor (terebra) several inches long that is used to drill into the wood of tree trunks. These species are parasitic in the larval stage on the larvae of horntail wasps, hence the egg must be deposited directly into the host's body as it is feeding. Impressively, the ovipositor of the giant ichneumon wasp is the longest egg-laying organ known among biologists.

The stings of the Aculeata (the wasps, hornets, bees, and ants) are ovipositors, highly modified and with associated venom glands. They are used to paralyze prey, or as defensive weapons. The penetrating sting plus venom allows the wasp to lay eggs with less risk of injury from the host. In some cases the injection also introduces virus particles that suppress the host's immune system and prevent it from destroying the eggs. However, in virtually all stinging Hymenoptera, the ovipositor is no longer used for egg-laying. An exception is the family Chrysididae, members of the Hymenoptera, in which species such as Chrysis ignita have reduced stinging apparatus and a functional ovipositor.

Some insects, such as the Dipteran families Tephritidae and Pyrgotidae have well-developed ovipositors only partly retracted when not in use, and the part that sticks out is called the scape or oviscape, meaning the stalk of the ovipositor.

In the breeding season of some roach-like fish, such as bitterlings, the females have an ovipositor in the form of a tubular extension of the genital orifice. They use it when depositing eggs in the mantle cavity of the pond mussel, where their eggs develop in reasonable security. Seahorses have an ovipositor for introducing eggs into the brood pouch of the male, who carries them till it is time to release the fry into a suitable situation in the open water.

Usage examples of "ovipositor".

The Ovipositor would probably weed out his mutation, reverting his child to what he would have beenone of them.

The Ovipositor tended to favor the alien genes over the native life-forms when it could.

Her ovipositor had already tucked itself away and the pleated skin of her abdomen was coming back into place.

The yellow-striped fly lived on the flambreg herds, the female sinking her ovipositor into the hide of the animals.

I guess, think of an ovipositor on a, like a bug, only it works across space, I guess, and--uh -- sort a time.

Now they were immobilized and placed before the Hostmaster, which extended the long ovipositor and set the young to work upon the host things.

With four three-fingered arms, tightly curled ovipositor, and sliding joints of armor, she looked like a nightmare insect.

But natural selection can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other species, as we see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs are deposited in the living bodies of other insects.

The large seeds were placed singly by means of an instrument resembling a magnified ovipositor, such as that possessed by many insects, which at regulated intervals made a hole in the ground and deposited a seed therein.

His stroking opened her ovipositor sphincters just before the egg reached them.

The trick, she knew, was to keep the ovipositor from spasm by controlling hormone levels.

Prime used the ovipositor to splice his alien genetics into her human DNA and impregnated her.

The ovipositor that handled his creation, however, had made himas close as alien technology couldperfect.

Since the ovipositor had its own independent, backup power system, only extensive damage like his father wreaked on the equipment itself would have caused it to fail.

From its reddish depths a pair of insectlike ovipositors extended outward.