subitaneous

adj — 2 senses

subitaneous

adj

Etymology From Latin subitaneus. Doublet of sudden.

1

Obsolete Sudden; suddenly done or made.

2

Immediately developing (as contrasted with e.g. diapausing).

Of the young of a species

  • ... subitaneous (immediately developing) and diapausing (dormant) eggs, brood retention, environmental sex determination and suppression of meiosis in subitaneous eggs. The production of subitaneous and diapausing eggs is[…]1989 October 31, Roger Neville Hughes, Functional Biology of Clonal Animals, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 136:
  • ... subitaneous or resting. This is enough to make the Calanoida eggs (about 104–106 m-2 of bottom area) more abundant than those of Rotifera (about 104 m-2) and Cladocera (about 103–105 m-2) in sediment assemblages (Hairston 1996). Among[…]2019 August 2, S. J. Hawkins, A. L. Allcock, A. E. Bates, L. B. Firth, I. P. Smith, S. E. Swearer, P. A. Todd, Oceanography and Marine Biology: An annual review. Volume 57, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 17:
1 more example
  • ... subitaneous offspring (Arbačiauskas 1998). The larger early fecundity at high food concentrations resulted in higher fitness of post-diapause females also in D. magna; however, a trend for a higher fitness in subitaneous offspring was[…]2019 September 25, Victor R. Alekseev, Bernadette Pinel-Alloul, Dormancy in Aquatic Organisms. Theory, Human Use and Modeling, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 167:
Synonyms
abrupt, precipitous, spontaneous
Derived terms
subitaneously, subitaneousness

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.