pierine
pierine noun: a butterfly of the family Pieridae.
Noun
pierine (plural pierines)
- A butterfly of the family Pieridae.
- Rather than reviewing the physics and physiology of butterfly thermoregulation here, I will simply note that thermoregulatory advantage is not yet proven for the seasonal phenotypes of any pierine, though strongly suspected; increased survivorship […]2012, K. Wöhrmann, Population Biology and Evolution, page 18
- Any hope that the pierines would help to define “the level at which r-K phenomena should be sought has been dashed: apparently species groups (or subgenera, or splitters' genera) are r- or K-selected in the holarctic, whereas in Tatochila the same amount of differentiation is found among...2012, Fritz Taylor, The Evolution of Insect Life Cycles, page 156
Adjective
pierine (not comparable)
- Relating to, or resembling, the butterflies of the family Pieridae.
- The bearing of the geographical distribution of existing Pierine forms upon the preceding phylogenetic conclusions was then considered, and it was shown that the facts of distribution, taken in connection with what was known of the means of transit possible for insects, and especially of the...1893, The Transactions of the Entomological Society of London
- No pigment of similar constitution to the Pierine white, yellow, and red, was found by Mr. Hopkins in any other butterfly—not even in the allied Papilioninae.1898, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, volume 26, Linnean Society of London, page 597
Examples of pierine in a sentence
- For Africa, Marshall has collected some fortysix observations of which almost half are concerned with Pierines.2016, Reginald Crundall Punnett, Mimicry in Butterflies:
- Perhaps some of the most interesting data on such properties of adaptive response, and constraints upon it, come from the recent studies of Shapiro on Andean pierine butterflies.2012, Allen M. Young, Population Biology of Tropical Insects, page 458:
Forms of pierine
| plural | pierines |
|---|
Questions about pierine
- What does pierine mean?
- Pierine means a butterfly of the family Pieridae.
- How do you use pierine in a sentence?
- For Africa, Marshall has collected some fortysix observations of which almost half are concerned with Pierines.
- What part of speech is pierine?
- Pierine can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of pierine?
- The plural of pierine is pierines.
Words near pierine in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pierine (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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Cite this entry: “pierine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pierine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.