dactylus

Noun

dactylus (plural dactyli)

1. Synonym of dactyl (“type of metrical foot”).

   Synonyms:

   dactyl

2. (marine biology) The tip of a cephalopod's tentacle club.
   • The distal end of the club, the dactylus (finger), is pointed and attenuated but is covered with hundreds of small suckers.1982 April, Clyde F.E. Roper, Kenneth J. Boss, “The Giant Squid”, in Scientific American, volume 246, number 4, →JSTOR, pages 96–105
   • […] suckers of carpus and dactylus portions small […]2001 June, N. Neethiselvan, “A new species of cuttlefish Sepia ramani sp. nov. (Class: Cephalopoda) from Tuticorin Bay, southeast coast of India”, in Indian Journal of Marine Sciences, volume 30...
3. The tip of a crustacean's leg.
   • The tip of the dactylus is short and hooked, with a scoop-shaped depression on the anterior surface.1975 November, Takahiro Fujino, “Fine features of the dactylus of the ambulatory pereiopods in a bivalve-associated shrimp, Anschistus miersi (De Man), under the scanning electron microscope...
   • Pereiopod 1 […] dactylus with 3 pointed processes on posterior margin (Fig. 2g).2001 April, Charles Oliver Coleman, Ines Jäger, “Acanthonotozomella rauscherti (Amphipoda, Acanthonotozomellidae), a new species from the Antarctic Ocean”, in Journal of Crustacean Biology, volume...