Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
branchia .
Etymologies
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Examples
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I must give one instance; he throws doubts and sneers at my saying that the ovigerous frena of cirripedes have been converted into branchiae, because I have not found them to be branchiae; whereas he himself admits, before I wrote on cirripedes, without the least hesitation, that their organs are branchiae.
Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences Marchant, James 1916
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Darwin first saw these creatures in the Indian Ocean, and said that they seek the sea every night to moisten their branchiae.
White Shadows in the South Seas Frederick O'Brien 1900
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It was a rare chance to find the branchiae preserved.
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 2 Thomas Henry Huxley 1860
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If all pedunculated cirripedes had become extinct, and they have already suffered far more extinction than have sessile cirripedes, who would ever have imagined that the branchiae in this latter family had originally existed as organs for preventing the ova from being washed out of the sack?
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Two distinct organs sometimes perform simultaneously the same function in the same individual; to give one instance, there are fish with gills or branchiae that breathe the air dissolved in the water, at the same time that they breathe free air in their swimbladders, this latter organ having a ductus pneumaticus for its supply, and being divided by highly vascular partitions.
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The Balanidae or sessile cirripedes, on the other hand, have no ovigerous frena, the eggs lying loose at the bottom of the sack, in the well-enclosed shell; but they have large folded branchiae.
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Now I think no one will dispute that the ovigerous frena in the one family are strictly homologous with the branchiae of the other family; indeed, they graduate into each other.
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In the higher Vertebrata the branchiae have wholly disappeared -- the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop-like course of the arteries still marking in the embryo their former position.
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These cirripedes have no branchiae, the whole surface of the body and sack, including the small frena, serving for respiration.
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Therefore I do not doubt that little folds of skin, which originally served as ovigerous frena, but which, likewise, very slightly aided the act of respiration, have been gradually converted by natural selection into branchiae, simply through an increase in their size and the obliteration of their adhesive glands.
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