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pupa

Origin: L. Pupa girl. Doll, puppet, fem. Of pupus. Cf. Puppet.

1. (Science: zoology) Any insect in that stage of its metamorphosis which usually immediately precedes the adult, or imago, stage.

Among insects belonging to the higher orders, as the hymenoptera, diptera, lepidoptera, the pupa is inactive and takes no food; in the lower orders it is active and takes food, and differs little from the imago except in the rudimentary state of the sexual organs, and of the wings in those that have wings when adult. The term pupa is sometimes applied to other invertebrates in analogous stages of development.

2. (Science: zoology) A genus of air-breathing land snails having an elongated spiral shell. Coarctate, or obtected, pupa, a pupa which is incased in the dried-up skin of the larva, as in many diptera. Masked pupa, a pupa whose limbs are bound down and partly concealed by a chitinous covering, as in lepidoptera.