Fossorial meaning

There may be said to be three or four different modes of life in these larvae: some are fossorial, and form tubes in the mud or clay in which they live; others are found on or beneath stones; while others again swim and crawl freely among water plants.

The prey is sometimes stung in the neighbourhood of the nerve ganglia, so that it is paralysed but not killed, the grub of the fossorial wasp devouring its victim alive; but this instinct varies in perfection, and in many cases the larva flourishes equally whether its prey be killed or not.

Among the Vespoid families of fossorial wasps, the Pornpilidae are the most important.

Louis Dollo especially has Fossorial Amphibious Digitigrade Grass Herb Herbivorous Shrub Fruit Root Dentition reduced Omnivorous Fish Carnivorous-{Flesh Carrion contributed most brilliant discussions of the theory of alternations of habitat as applied to the interpretation of the anatomy of the marsupials, of many kinds of fishes, of such reptiles as the herbivorous dinosaurs of the Upper Cretaceous.

Indeed, despite the fact that they present much diversity of habit - some being arboreal, as the squirrels, many of which are provided with expansions of skin or parachutes on which they glide from tree to tree; some cursorial, as the hares; others jumpers, as the jerboas; others fossorial, as the mole-rats; and others aquatic, as the beavers and waterrats - no important structural modifications are correlated with such diversity of habit.