autocolonies

Noun

autocolony (plural autocolonies)

1. A daughter colony formed inside a cell of a parent colony.
   • This may be because the formation of autocolonies within the mother cell wall is a considerable advance over the condition of free-lying spherical cells, and because along with the development of this autocolonial habit there has gone almost necessarily an axial differentiation of the individual...1914, Gilbert Morgan Smith, The Organization of the Colony in Certain Four-celled Coenobic Algae, page 1175