Collembola
/kəˈlɛmbələ
/plural noun Entomology
1An order of insects that comprises the springtails.Springtails, members of the order Collembola have a history as long as the presence of insects on land, and fossils show that their basic wingless, eyeless body plan has not changed substantially in that time....
- Based on their mouthparts, Hennig joined Protura, Collembola, and Diplura into Entognatha (with enclosed mouthparts), in contrast to Ectognatha (Insecta sensu stricto, with exposed mouthparts).
- The world's most abundant insect (although taxonomists debate if they are true insects), Collembola have been around for at least 400 million years and exist in as many as 100,000 varieties.
1.1 (collembola) Insects of the order Collembola; springtails: most collembola live in damp places...
- The soil dwelling collembola typically feed on decaying vegetative material, fungi, and bacteria and other species feed on an array of things such as arthropod feces, pollen, algae, and many other substances and materials.
- Those insects with the lowest [delta] 15 N values - midges and Collembola - are thought to be prominent in the diets of knots and turnstones.
- In a separate component of this study, more invertebrates were trapped in upland arrays but most were Collembola.
Derivatives
collembolan
- The matter focuses on an order of minuscule hexapods called collembolans, or springtails, which includes thousands of species.
- Lesser rearrangements, involving the reshuffling of tRNA genes, have been documented in honey bees, other hymenopterans, mosquitoes, collembolans, and an anostracan crustacean.
- In the middle Devonian the first collembolans made their appearance, and by the Pennsylvanian, or late Carboniferous, winged insects were present, including the first mayflies and cockroaches.
Origin
Modern Latin (plural), from Greek kolla 'glue' + embolon 'peg, stopper' (with reference to the sticky substance secreted by the ventral tube of the insects).