metameren.

1870 G. Rolleston Forms Animal Life Introd. p. civ Arthropoda. Animals consisting of a series of more or less heteronomous segments, the ‘Metameren’ or ‘Folgestücke’ of Haeckel.]

1876 A. Macalister Introd. Animal Morphol. & Systematic Zool.: Invertebrata xxxiv. 242 Their structure can be easily understood by regarding them as Vermes with no articulated appendages, modified by..a fusion of metameres.

1890 New Sydenham Soc. Lexicon (at cited word) Thus, in the crayfish a metamere consists of a central part termed the somite, with two appendages; each segment of the body can be reduced to this common type; the whole structure being capable of resolution into the skeletons of twenty separate metameres.

1964 R. M. Fox & J. W. Fox Introd. Compar. Entomol. vii. 229 Sometimes the body is first marked off into regions (macrosomites) which then divide into definitive metameres.

1994 Development 120 2287 Homeotic genes determine the identities of metameres in Drosophila.

1887 H. M. Ward tr. J. von Sachs Lect. Physiol. Plants xxix. 483 The organ becomes segmented into a series of parts which may be distinguished as Metameres—an expression already employed in Zoology.

1914 Jrnl. Ecol. 2 187 The march of development of the metameres, or ‘joints’, in many seed plants.

1995 Botanica Acta 108 414 This suggested that variation in phenotypic plasticity reflected developmental constraints imposed by contrasting life span and metamere size in different genotypes [of Polygonum aviculare].