A flattened wormlike parasite that infests vertebrates, especially reptiles, having a sucking mouth with hooks for attachment to the lining of the respiratory tract.
舌形虫，囊舌虫
Subphylum Pentastomida, phylum Arthropoda; sometimes regarded as a class of crustacean
Example sentencesExamples
In cephalobaenid tongue worms the nervous system consists of the brain which is connected to ganglia.
Adult tongue worms are usually whitish in colour and range in size from a few millimetres to about 15 cm in length.
Following copulation, the female tongue worm releases her eggs into the host's lungs.
As their former host gets digested, the tongue worm larvae break out of their cysts and burrow over to their new host's lungs to mature.
Our discovery recently of larval pentastomids in cockroaches in Singapore is therefore of unusual significance since it appears to be the first record of the finding of tongue worms in invertebrates.
Definition of tongue worm in US English:
tongue worm
nounˈtəNG ˌwərm
A flattened wormlike parasite that infests vertebrates, especially reptiles, having a sucking mouth with hooks for attachment to the lining of the respiratory tract.
舌形虫，囊舌虫
Subphylum Pentastomida, phylum Arthropoda; sometimes regarded as a class of crustacean
Example sentencesExamples
Our discovery recently of larval pentastomids in cockroaches in Singapore is therefore of unusual significance since it appears to be the first record of the finding of tongue worms in invertebrates.
In cephalobaenid tongue worms the nervous system consists of the brain which is connected to ganglia.
Following copulation, the female tongue worm releases her eggs into the host's lungs.
Adult tongue worms are usually whitish in colour and range in size from a few millimetres to about 15 cm in length.
As their former host gets digested, the tongue worm larvae break out of their cysts and burrow over to their new host's lungs to mature.