summit disease
Syllables: sum·mit dis·easeUK/ˌsʌmɪt dɪˈziːz//ˌsʌmɪt dəˈziz/
summit disease noun: a disease (usually fungal, caused by the species complex Entomophaga grylli) that affects various species of insect, especially grasshoppers, whereby the infected individual typically climbs to the upper parts of a plant, attaches itself there and dies, at which point the infecting agent disperses itself, usually in the form of spores.
Noun
summit disease (countable and uncountable, plural summit diseases)
- A disease (usually fungal, caused by the species complex Entomophaga grylli) that affects various species of insect, especially grasshoppers, whereby the infected individual typically climbs to the upper parts of a plant, attaches itself there and dies, at which point the infecting agent disperses itself, usually in the form of spores.
- Some fungus mediated behavioral changes have been recorded, such as "summit disease" where infected grasshoppers climb to the top of plants to die[…]. This may aid spore dispersal, but it has also been suggested that it is a mechanism by which the host reduces infection through increased exposure...2010, M[ark] S[tanislaw] Goettel, J[ørgen] Eilenberg, T[ravis] Glare, “Entomopathogenic Fungi and Their Role in Regulation of Insect Populations”, in Lawrence I[rwin] Gilbert, Sarjeet S[ingh] Gill...
- Soybean looper, Thysanoplusia orichalcea, infected with Thysanoplusia orichalcea nucleopolyhedrovirus. The image illustrates what is known as treetop disease or summit disease, whereby the host climbs to an exposed position (e.g., on vegetation) before death to facilitate dispersal of the pathogen.2012, David I[an] Shapiro-Ilan, Denny J[oseph] Bruck, Lawrence A[nthony] Lacey, “Principles of Epizootiology and Microbial Control”, in Fernando E. Vega, Harry K[azuyoshi] Kaya, editors, Insect...
- Synonyms:
- treetop disease
Examples of summit disease in a sentence
- Some fungus mediated behavioral changes have been recorded, such as "summit disease" where infected grasshoppers climb to the top of plants to die[…].2010, M[ark] S[tanislaw] Goettel, J[ørgen] Eilenberg, T[ravis] Glare, “Entomopathogenic Fungi and Their Role in Regulation of Insect...
- A particularly striking example of host manipulation called ‘summit disease’ occurs across a wide range of insect groups including aphids, grasshoppers, butterflies and moths, beetles and ants.2017, Jack Ashby, “Caterpillar with Parasitoid Fungus: Dried Specimen”, in Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects, Stroud...
- The death grip, summit disease, these are extended characteristics of the fungus, part of its extended phenotype.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, “Mycelial Minds”, in Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, London...
Synonyms of summit disease
Forms of summit disease
| plural | summit diseases |
|---|
Origin of summit disease
From summit + disease, from the tendency of infected insects to climb to the upper parts of plants before dying.
Words that rhyme with summit disease
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- wheeze
- Cantonese
- chemise
- miner's disease
- trapeze
- Congolese
- dees
- disease
- displease
- frieze
- Japanese
- Keyes
- leese
- overseas
- pease
- please
- Portuguese
- sneeze
- tweeze
- appease
- bes
- bez
- blue cheese
- botanese
- Burmese
- expertise
- fries
- greeze
- Guyanese
- he's
- Javanese
- keys
- legalese
- Louise
- Maltese
- Ningbonese
- octopodes
- Pekingese
- Shanghainese
- she's
- Sinhalese
- Socrates
- tees
- Versaillese
- Viennese
- Vietnamese
- a little bit of bread and no cheese
- academese
Questions about summit disease
- What does summit disease mean?
- Summit disease means a disease (usually fungal, caused by the species complex Entomophaga grylli) that affects various species of insect, especially grasshoppers, whereby the infected individual typically climbs to the upper parts of a plant, attaches itself there and dies, at which point the infecting agent disperses itself, usually in the form of spores.
- How do you use summit disease in a sentence?
- Some fungus mediated behavioral changes have been recorded, such as "summit disease" where infected grasshoppers climb to the top of plants to die[…].
- What part of speech is summit disease?
- Summit disease is a noun.
- How do you pronounce summit disease?
- Summit disease is pronounced /ˌsʌmɪt dɪˈziːz/ (UK).
- What is the plural of summit disease?
- The plural of summit disease is summit diseases.
Words near summit disease in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: summit disease (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-summit disease.oga.
Cite this entry: “summit disease.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/summit_disease. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.