diapause

American  

[dahy-uh-pawz] / ˈdaɪ əˌpɔz /

noun

1. a period of hormonally controlled quiescence, especially in immature insects, characterized by cessation of growth and reduction of metabolic activity, often occurring seasonally or when environmental conditions are unfavorable.

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verb (used without object)

diapaused, diapausing

1. to undergo diapause.

diapause British  

/ ˈdaɪəˌpɔːz /

noun

1. a period of suspended development and growth accompanied by decreased metabolism in insects and some other animals. It is correlated with seasonal changes

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Etymology

Origin of diapause

1890–95; < Greek diápausis; dia-, pause

Example Sentences

Like many insects, ladybirds enter a state of inactivity over winter known as diapause – an insect version of hibernation.

From BBC

They report May 30 in the journal Cell that although killifish evolved diapause less than 18 million years ago, they did so by co-opting ancient genes that originated more than 473 million years ago.

From Science Daily

Through comparative analysis, the team showed that similar specialized gene expression patterns are also employed by other animals -- including the house mouse -- during diapause.

From Science Daily

"The whole program is like day and night -- there is life in the normal state and life in the diapause state, and the way this happened was by reshuffling or re-wiring the regulatory region of a whole set of genes," says senior author and molecular biologist Anne Brunet of Stanford University.

From Science Daily

"It's roughly in the middle of development, and many organs are already formed by that stage -- they have a developing brain and a heart which stops beating in diapause and then starts again," says first author Param Priya Singh of the University of California, San Francisco.

From Science Daily