Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A leaf-cutting ant; one of the tropical or subtropical ants which defoliate trees, as Atta fervens.
- noun A leaf-cutting bee, as any species of the genus Megachile: so called from their cutting or biting out morsels of leaves to line their nests with. Also called
upholsterer . - noun A knife used to cut the leaves of a book: same as
paper-cutter .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any
insect that cuts pieces from leaves.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun bee that cuts rounded pieces from leaves and flowers to line its nest
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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One caste cuts foliage and leaves—their mandibular muscles make up one-quarter of their entire body mass—and some tropical ecologists estimate that the leaf-cutter colonies may harvest up to 17 percent of the total leaf production of a tropical rainforest where they thrive, in Mexico and Central and South America.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Queen leaf-cutter, who rules over the greatest super-organism, still has much to teach us.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Measuring an inch or so long, the leaf-cutter queen lies at the heart of her sprawling subterranean empire.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Entire ships had been spirited out of the water and broken up, while gangs were busy stripping apart any intact military vehicle they could find, like hordes of busy leaf-cutter ants.
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In all, a single leaf-cutter nest may harbor a thousand such chambers.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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The achievements of colonies of leaf-cutter ants have been hailed as “one of the major breakthroughs in animal evolution” by Edward Wilson at Harvard University.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Wilson likes to point out that both our civilization and that of the leaf-cutter owe their existence to agriculture.
SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011
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Yeohlee Teng 's collection, inspired, the designer said, by leaf-cutter ants, introduced a silhouette that she referred to as crescent.
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The jaws of leaf-cutter ants and locusts, for example, both contain high levels of zinc, making them particularly stiff and hard.
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There are squash bees, blueberry bees, the hornfaced bee that pollinates apple trees, and alfalfa leaf-cutter bees.
As Honeybees Continue to Vanish, Einstein's Prediction Looms...Or Does It? 2008
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