What is "scopa"

tuft of hairs on a bee's leg, from Latin scopae (plural) "twigs, shoots; a broom, brush," related to scapus "shaft" (see scape (n.2)).

Etymology 1 n. Any of various body parts of non-parasitic bees that serve to carry pollen. Etymology 2

n. (context card games English) A Neapolitan card game.

Scopa is an Italian card game, and one of the two major national card games in Italy. It is also popular in Brazil, brought in by Italian immigrants, mostly in the Scopa di Quindici variation. Scopa is also played in countries like Libya and Somalia. It is played with a standard Italian 40-card deck, mostly between two players or four in two partnerships, but it can also be played by 3, 5, or 6 players.

The name is an Italian noun meaning "broom", since taking a scopa means "to sweep" all the cards from the table. Watching a game of scopa can be a highly entertaining activity, since games traditionally involve lively, colorful, and somewhat strong-worded banter in between hands. However, skill and chance are more important to the outcome of the game.

The term scopa (plural scopae; Latin for "broom") is used to refer to any of a number of different modifications on the body of a non-parasitic bee that form a pollen-carrying apparatus. In most bees, the scopa is simply a particularly dense mass of elongated, often branched, hairs (or setae) on the hind leg. When present on the hind legs, the modified hairs are, at a minimum, on the tibia, but some bees also have modified hairs on the femur and/or trochanter. A few bees have, in addition to the leg hairs, many modified hairs on the ventral surface of the abdomen which are also used in pollen transport; there is one family of bees, Megachilidae, in which the modified leg hairs are absent, and the scopa is limited to the abdominal hairs (see photo). In the familiar honey bees and bumblebees, the scopa is replaced by the pollen basket (corbicula).

There are other various types of modified hairs on bees that are used to remove pollen, floral oils, or other chemicals from plants, and these can be on the face, mouthparts, or the front or middle legs, but these are not classified as a scopa; the term is explicitly restricted to hairs used to transport pollen. There are some bees which transport pollen internally in the crop, and these lack a scopa, as do cleptoparasitic bees, which do not gather their own pollen.

Category:Pollination Category:Bees

Scopa may refer to:

• Scopa, a card game
• Scopa (biology), an anatomical feature of insects
• Scopa, Piedmont, a municipality in Italy
• An acronym for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania