nauplius

[naw-plee-uhs]

noun

plural

nauplii 

1. (in many crustaceans) a larval form with three pairs of appendages and a single median eye, occurring usually as the first stage of development after leaving the egg.

nauplius

/ ˈnɔːplɪəs /

noun

1. the larva of many crustaceans, having a rounded unsegmented body with three pairs of limbs

Other Word Forms

• nauplial adjective
• naupliform adjective
• nauplioid adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of nauplius¹

1830–40; < Latin: a kind of shellfish

Word History and Origins

Origin of nauplius¹

C19: from Latin: type of shellfish, from Greek Nauplios, one of the sons of Poseidon

Example Sentences

Nauplius larvae of Tisbe copepods, 50 to 80 micrometres small, are of similar size to Aiptasia larvae, making them an ideal food.

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There’s Orpheus, who can charm anything and anybody with his song; Nauplius, the greatest sailor of his time; Euphemus, “the fleetest-footed man alive”; Lynceus, endowed with super-vision — “they say that he could easily project/ his eye beams even underneath the earth” — and the shape-changer Periclymenus.

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Nauplius, naw′pli-us, n. a stage of development of low Crustaceans, as cirripeds, &c.:—pl.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

The three pairs of appendages present in the “nauplius” larva show certain peculiarities of structure and development which seem to place them in a different category from the other limbs, and there is some ground for regarding the three corresponding somites as constituting a “primary cephalon.”

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In those Copepods in which the palps of the mandibles as well as the antennae are biramous and natatory, the first three pairs of appendages retain throughout life, with little modification, the shape and function which they have in the nauplius stage, and must, in all likelihood, be regarded as approximating to those of the primitive Crustacea.

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