trophophoresy
trophophoresy noun: a form of trophobiosis in which one creature carries another creature to another location to farm it (harvest food from it, often after feeding it) there.
Noun
trophophoresy (uncountable)
- A form of trophobiosis in which one creature carries another creature to another location to farm it (harvest food from it, often after feeding it) there.
- The mealybug-tending ant A. epedana is an obligate coccidiphile with trophophoretic queens. Trophophoresy is defined as the behavior of a foundress queen transporting a trophobiont on her mating flight for the establishment of a new mealybug "herd" in her new colony.2002 December, “Natural History of the Mealybug-Tending Ant, Acropyga epedana, with Descriptions of the Male and Queen Castes”, in Transactions of the American Entomological Society, volume 128...
- Acropyga spp. ants show obligate trophophoresy with mealybugs, in which newly mated queens carry a mealybug with them when founding new colonies.2007, M. J. Wade, “The co-evolutionary genetics of ecological communities”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), Nature Reviews Genetics
Origin of trophophoresy
From tropho- + phoresy. Coined by John S. LaPolla in 2002.
Questions about trophophoresy
- What does trophophoresy mean?
- Trophophoresy means a form of trophobiosis in which one creature carries another creature to another location to farm it (harvest food from it, often after feeding it) there.
- What part of speech is trophophoresy?
- Trophophoresy is a noun.
Words near trophophoresy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: trophophoresy (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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