Abstract
THE proboscis of the blowfly has been so often figured and described that students generally have no difficulty in understanding its structure and mode of working. There is, however, one small ambiguity that beginners are liable to find somewhat perplexing, especially when only balsam preparations are used, namely, the use of the word mouth to describe the opening in the centre of the terminal disc. That this opening is not the mouth in the sense of being the entrance to the pharynx is apparent when one dissects a well-distended proboscis that has been cleared in potash. If the disc is snipped off and examined under water without pressure (see Fig. 1), the opening is found to be identical with the gap lying between the two lobes (labella), particularly with the small central region, which is nearly but not quite partitioned off from the upper part and which is continuous behind with the channel-like groove in the haustellum.
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TAYLOR, T. The Blowfly's Mouth. Nature 125, 238 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125238b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125238b0
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