| / English Dictionary |
INVERTEBRATE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Any animal lacking a backbone or notochord; the term is not used as a scientific classification
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("invertebrate" is a kind of...):
animal; animate being; beast; brute; creature; fauna (a living organism characterized by voluntary movement)
Meronyms (parts of "invertebrate"):
foot; invertebrate foot (any of various organs of locomotion or attachment in invertebrates)
peristome (region around the mouth in various invertebrates)
Domain member category:
exoskeleton (the exterior protective or supporting structure or shell of many animals (especially invertebrates) including bony or horny parts such as nails or scales or hoofs)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "invertebrate"):
echinoderm (marine invertebrates with tube feet and five-part radially symmetrical bodies)
peanut worm; sipunculid (small unsegmented marine worm that when disturbed retracts its anterior portion into the body giving the appearance of a peanut)
brachiopod; lamp shell; lampshell (marine animal with bivalve shell having a pair of arms bearing tentacles for capturing food; found worldwide)
Symbion pandora (only known species of Cycliophora; lives symbiotically attached to a lobster's lip by an adhesive disk and feeding by means of a hairy mouth ring; its complex life cycle includes asexual and sexual phases)
entoproct (any of various moss-like aquatic animals usually forming branching colonies; each polyp having a both mouth and anus within a closed ring of tentacles)
ectoproct (sessile mossy aquatic animal having the anus of the polyp outside the crown of tentacles)
bryozoan; moss animal; polyzoan; sea mat; sea moss (sessile aquatic animal forming mossy colonies of small polyps each having a curved or circular ridge bearing tentacles; attach to stones or seaweed and reproduce by budding)
phoronid (hermaphrodite wormlike animal living in mud of the sea bottom)
mollusc; mollusk; shellfish (invertebrate having a soft unsegmented body usually enclosed in a shell)
rotifer (minute aquatic multicellular organisms having a ciliated wheel-like organ for feeding and locomotion; constituents of freshwater plankton)
borer; woodborer (any of various insects or larvae or mollusks that bore into wood)
worm (any of numerous relatively small elongated soft-bodied animals especially of the phyla Annelida and Chaetognatha and Nematoda and Nemertea and Platyhelminthes; also many insect larvae)
comb jelly; ctenophore (biradially symmetrical hermaphroditic solitary marine animals resembling jellyfishes having for locomotion eight rows of cilia arranged like teeth in a comb)
cnidarian; coelenterate (radially symmetrical animals having saclike bodies with only one opening and tentacles with stinging structures; they occur in polyp and medusa forms)
parazoan; poriferan; sponge (primitive multicellular marine animal whose porous body is supported by a fibrous skeletal framework; usually occurs in sessile colonies)
zoophyte (any of various invertebrate animals resembling a plant such as a sea anemone or coral or sponge)
arthropod (invertebrate having jointed limbs and a segmented body with an exoskeleton made of chitin)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lacking a backbone or spinal column
Example:
worms are an example of invertebrate animals
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Domain category:
zoological science; zoology (the branch of biology that studies animals)
Antonym:
vertebrate (having a backbone or spinal column)
Context examples:
Invertebrates or non-human vertebrates which transmit infective organisms from one host to another.
(Disease Vector, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)
Chromatophores (large pigment cells of fish, amphibia, reptiles and many invertebrates) which contain melanin.
(Murine Melanophores, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)
The thick-walld muscular pouch, part of the digestive system of birds, insects and invertebrates, which is responsible for digestion.
(Gizzard, NCI Thesaurus)
A small, mammal of the family Talpidae that lives underground and feeds on small invertebrates.
(Mole, NCI Thesaurus)
Alphaviruses are spread by insect vector, able to infect vertebrates and invertebrates, and cause arthritis, encephalitis, rashes and fever in humans.
(Alphavirus, NCI Thesaurus)
This work by Professor Strausfeld and his colleagues is part of a larger innovative project to better understand the organization and evolution of the brains of invertebrates.
(How mantis shrimp make sense of the world, National Science Foundation)
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide gas released into the atmosphere is also making sea water more acidic, affecting the calcification of coral and invertebrates, and so decreasing the habitat and food of reef-associated fish.
(Pacific island fish migrating to cooler seas, SciDev.Net)
Waste from the invertebrates is a consistent component of the "missing nitrogen."
(In search of an undersea kelp forest's missing nitrogen, National Science Foundation)
Both vertebrates and invertebrates have the ability to recognise potentially toxic flavours, thereby avoiding poisoning.
(Researchers identify area of the amygdala involved in taste aversion, University of Granada)
Cells in invertebrates which are specialized to detect and transduce light and darkness and relay that information centrally in the nervous system.
(Photoreceptors, Invertebrate, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)
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