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The mandibles of a bull ant. Insect mandibles are a pair of appendages near the insect's mouth, and the most anterior of the three pairs of oral appendages (the labrum is more anterior, but is a single fused structure). Their function is typically to grasp, crush, or cut the insect's food, or to defend against predators or rivals.
The mandibles of a bull ant European honeybee (Apis mellifera) lapping mouthparts, showing labium and maxillae. A chewing insect has a pair of mandibles, one on each side of the head. The mandibles are caudal to the labrum and anterior to the maxillae.
Ants have long, broad, serrated jaws, used for digging, collecting food, fighting and cutting, and are probably the most important work tool ants possess. Ants typically bite each other when fighting. Some ants use mandibles to injure the enemy and squirt poison into the wound. Harvester ants use their mandibles to collect and carry seeds.
The salivary glands (element 30 in numbered diagram) in an insect's mouth produce saliva. The salivary ducts lead from the glands to the reservoirs and then forward through the head to an opening called the salivarium, located behind the hypopharynx. By moving its mouthparts (element 32 in numbered diagram) the insect can mix its food with saliva.
Sea spiders possess a tubular proboscis forward from the body trunk, at the end of which is the opening to the mouth. In those species that lack chelifores and palps, the proboscis is well developed and more mobile and flexible. In such cases, it can be equipped with sensory bristles and strong rasping ridges around the mouth.
Ants – social insects with geniculate (elbowed) antennae and a distinctive node-like structure that forms a slender waist. Ants are of the family Formicidae and evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago, diversifying after the rise of flowering plants.
Diagram of a worker ant (Neoponera verenae) Ants are distinct in their morphology from other insects in having geniculate (elbowed) antennae, metapleural glands, and a strong constriction of their second abdominal segment into a node-like petiole. The head, mesosoma, and metasoma are the three distinct body segments (formally tagmata).
The forelegs are reduced in the Nymphalidae Diagram of an insect leg. The thorax, which develops from segments 2, 3, and 4 of the larva, consists of three invisibly divided segments, namely prothorax, metathorax, and mesothorax. [11] The organs of insect locomotion – the legs and wings – are borne on the thorax.
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