SPORE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Spore

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noun

Spore n.

(Bot.)

(a)

One of the minute grains in flowerless plants, which are analogous to seeds, as serving to reproduce the species. Note: Spores are produced differently in the different classes of cryptogamous plants, and as regards their nature are often so unlike that they have only their minuteness in common. The peculiar spores of diatoms (called auxospores) increase in size, and at length acquire a siliceous coating, thus becoming new diatoms of full size. Compare Macrospore, Microspore, Oospore, Resting spore, Sphaerospore, Swarmspore, Tetraspore, Zoospore, and Zygospore.

(b)

An embryo sac or embryonal vesicle in the ovules of flowering plants.

(Biol.)

(a)

A minute grain or germ; a small, round or ovoid body, formed in certain organisms, and by germination giving rise to a new organism; as, the reproductive spores of bacteria, etc.

(b)

One of the parts formed by fission in certain Protozoa. See Spore formation, belw.

Spore formation.

(a)

(Biol) A mode of reproduction resembling multiple fission, common among Protozoa, in which the organism breaks up into a number of pieces, or spores, each of which eventually develops into an organism like the parent form.

(b)

The formation of reproductive cells or spores, as in the growth of bacilli.

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Etymology of 'Spore'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spore" Quotes from Famous Books

... toke the hors with spore, No lenger wolde he abyde: 'Aske to drynke,' than sayd Robyn, 'Or that ye ...

— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... similar to those of embryonic development. The only case known to me in which budding by the adult is accompanied by morphological features similar to those displayed by embryos is furnished by the budding of the medusiform spore-sacs of hydrozoon polyps. But this case is exceptional, for here we have to do with an attempt, which fails, to form a free-swimming organism, the medusa; and the vestiges which appear in the buds are the umbrella-cavity, ...

— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... fission, each parent cell giving rise to two daughter cells, and this process goes on with extraordinary rapidity. Other varieties, particularly bacilli, are propagated by the formation of spores. A spore is a minute mass of protoplasm surrounded by a dense, tough membrane, developed in the interior of the parent cell. Spores are remarkable for their tenacity of life, and for the resistance they offer to the action ...

— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

Words linked to "Spore" : spore mother cell, endospore, basidiospore, tetraspore, oospore, spore case, spore-bearing, conidiospore, aeciospore, zygospore, chlamydospore, megaspore, spore sac, zoospore, ascospore