body plan

American  

noun

1. Biology. the basic shape of members of an animal phylum; the general structure each individual organism assumes as it develops.

2. Naval Architecture. a diagrammatic elevation of a hull, consisting of an end view of the bow on one side of the center line and an end view of the stern on the other side, marked with water lines, diagonals, bow or buttock lines, stations, and sometimes details of the hull.

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Etymology

Origin of body plan

First recorded in 1840–50

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

body plan

The fossils offer new clues to the origins and early evolution of the insect body plan while also revealing how the rise of insects contributed to the emergence of increasingly complex ecosystems on land.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026

Some scientists proposed that snakes first became elongated and limbless while adapting to underground life, while others argued that the body plan emerged in aquatic environments.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 5, 2026

There are over 6,000 living species of frogs known to scientists, as well as countless extinct species — and yet they all contain roughly the same skeletal body plan.

From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2024

And by the late 1970s, the heyday of molecular biology and developmental genetics had arrived: fruit fly geneticists discovered Hox and other major genes that set up the fruit fly body plan.

From Scientific American ● Nov. 9, 2023

It might seem intuitive for an embryologist to approach the problem of genesis forward—from the earliest events in the embryo to the development of a body plan of a full-fledged organism.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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