Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or having the characters of the Exopterygota; having the wings developed outside of the body.
- noun A member of the Exopterygota.
Etymologies
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Examples
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We have already noticed (p. 40) how Sharp (1899) has laid stress on the essential difference between the exopterygote and endopterygote insects, the wing-rudiments of the former growing outwards throughout life while those of the latter remain hidden until the pupal instar.
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All these insects must have been exopterygote in their life-history, if we may trust the indications of affinity furnished by their structure.
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The acquisition of wings is, as we have seen, a dominating feature in them all, but if we try to go yet a step farther back and speculate on the origin of wings in the most primitive exopterygote insects, the task becomes still more difficult.
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The foregoing brief outline of our knowledge of the geological succession of insects shows that the exopterygote preceded, in time, the endopterygote type of life-history.
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In a previous chapter reference was made to the exopterygote insects, stone-flies, dragon-flies, and may-flies, whose preparatory stages live in the water.
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The leg and wing rudiments of the male coccid (pp. 20-1) beneath the cuticle of the second instar are strictly comparable to imaginal buds, and these are present in one instar of what is generally regarded as an exopterygote life-history.
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And from the analogy of the periodic loss and recovery of wings in various generations of the same species, he has concluded that the gap between the exopterygote and the endopterygote method of development may have been bridged by an anapterygote condition; that the ancestors of those insects with complete transformations were the wingless descendants of primitive insects which grew their wings from visible external rudiments, and that in later times re-acquiring wings, they developed these organs in a new way, from inwardly directed rudiments or imaginal buds.
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a gradual transition from the exopterygote to the endopterygote type of life-story is at least conceivable.
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