Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The transfer or exchange of regurgitated liquid food between individuals of certain social insects such as ants or bees.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biology The mutual
exchange offood between individuals, especially insocial insects
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The species displays unusual and in one or two cases possibly even unique social behaviours, including the consumption and sharing of infrabuccal pellets, the apparent absence of adult transport, a primarily or exclusively mechanical form of colony defence, and a remarkable form of abdominal trophallaxis.
ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Alex Wild none@example.com 2010
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The species displays unusual and in one or two cases possibly even unique social behaviours, including the consumption and sharing of infrabuccal pellets, the apparent absence of adult transport, a primarily or exclusively mechanical form of colony defence, and a remarkable form of abdominal trophallaxis.
ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Alex Wild none@example.com 2010
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Placing a food item would lead to mostly the same behavior as they'd eat enough to bring back to the nest, where they could transfer food through trophallaxis to the nursery workers, but when they realized the fact that they were not getting home soon, they'd instead give mouth-to-mouth to the other members of the spiral until all were fed, regardless of who ate the food originally.
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Thank you for playing, the game, that is. trophallaxis, merdiverous, hive bottom feeders. the lot.
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Thank you for playing, the game, that is. trophallaxis, merdiverous, hive bottom feeders. the lot.
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The bait is distributed to other members of the colony through the exchange of food known as trophallaxis.
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The bait is distributed to other members of the colony through the exchange of food known as trophallaxis.
yarb commented on the word trophallaxis
As the adults deny the giving of predigested food to their young, so do they deny it to one another, and thus there is absent one of the strongest bonds which maintains intact the structure of the higher colonies - the bond of trophallaxis. It is indeed questionable whether the body structure of this lowly, semisocial ant would permit of such procedure, for its crop, or "social stomach," which enables the higher ants to distribute ingluvial food to their nest mates by regurgitation, is not well developed.
- Caryl P. Haskins, Of Ants and Men, 1939, p. 32
December 4, 2008