altricial

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“
Corresponding to the precocial - altricial analogy, helping by workers is selected in ants, while new evidence suggests that wood-dwelling termite workers are less engaged in brood care.

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Definitions (4)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. adjective Helpless, naked, and blind when hatched: altricial birds.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

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Examples (15)

  • Nevertheless, pooling species that exhibited any relationship with human influence and comparing them with unrelated species indicated they were significantly smaller, nested closer to the ground, had shorter incubation and fledging times, and tended to be altricial. —  CiteULike: Everyone's library
  • Derrickson EM (1992) Comparative reproductive strategies of altricial and precocial eutherian mammals. —  PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles
  • Elephant-shrews are altricial animals, meaning that the young require nourishment for a time after birth. —  DCist
  • They have some features not in their favour biologically, including their 'k-select' nature (I think that's still the term used) as slow-reproducing altricial birds, which live until a ripe [and presumably effete] age. —  10,000 Birds
  • With early separation (via an egg or an altricial offspring) females have enough additional control over offspring strategies for garnering nutrition from the mother that there are few paternal strategies involving maternal nutritive supply that can be exploited, and thus, a maternal counter strategy using imprinting need not evolve. —  ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Latin altrīx, altrīc-, feminine of altor, nourisher, from alere, to nourish; see al-2 in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Altrices.
 

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/ælˈtrɪsɪəl/
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