Word.ws English Dictionary

heliotaxis

heliotaxis noun: movement of an organism toward sunlight; positive heliotaxis.

Noun

heliotaxis (uncountable)

  1. Movement of an organism toward sunlight; positive heliotaxis.
  2. Movement of an organism away from sunlight; negative heliotaxis.
    • Pronounced negative heliotaxis, evidently depending on some photodermatic sense, was apparent when the ants were exposed to the sun...1903, William Morton Wheeler, “Some Notes on the Habits of Cerapachs Augustae”, in Psyche, 10(325-326), page 206

Origin of heliotaxis

From helio- + taxis.

Questions about heliotaxis

What does heliotaxis mean?
Heliotaxis means movement of an organism toward sunlight; positive heliotaxis.
What part of speech is heliotaxis?
Heliotaxis is a noun.

Words near heliotaxis in the dictionary

  1. heliosynchronous orbit
  2. heliosynchronous orbits
  3. heliotactic
  4. heliotail
  5. heliotails
  6. heliotaxis
  7. heliothalassotherapy
  8. heliotheism
  9. heliotheist
  10. heliotheistic
  11. heliotheists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heliotaxis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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