metamere

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of the homologous segments, lying in a longitudinal series, that compose the body of certain animals, such as earthworms and lobsters. Also called somite.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In zoology, one of a longitudinal series of parts which are serially homologous with one another. See metameric, metamerism. The construction of bilaterally symmetrical bodies by metamerism is common and usual in the animal kingdom, and is exhibited in such diversity of details that metameres have received several different names. The most general name is segment; but, since several morphologically distinct metameres may coalesce in one segment, the stricter term for an individual metamere, such as each morphological segment or ring of an annelid, crustacean, insect, or other articulate animal, is somite or arthromere. A morphological metamere of a vertebrate has been called a diar-thromere. Compare actinomere and antimere.

Wiktionary

1. n. biology One of successive or homodynamous parts in animals and plants; one of a series of similar parts that follow one another in a vertebrate or articulate animal, as in an earthworm; a segment or somite.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Biol.) One of successive or homodynamous parts in animals and plants; one of a series of similar parts that follow one another in a vertebrate or articulate animal, as in an earthworm; a segment; a somite. See Illust. of loeven's larva.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. one of a series of similar body segments into which some animals are divided longitudinally