kairomone

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
15
Words With Friends
17
Letters
9
Pronunciation
/ˈkaɪɹə(ʊ)məʊn/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈkaɪɹə(ʊ)məʊn/ · /ˈkaɪɹəˌmoʊn/

Definition of kairomone

1 sense · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. Any substance produced by an individual of one species (often an insect) that benefits the recipient which is of a different species but is harmful to the producer.
    “Among these substances, we propose to designate two major functional groupings by the terms allomone and kairomone, chosen as intentional parallels to the term pheromone.”
    “Host‐finding by the parasitic wasp Orgilus lepidus, a braconid parasite, is mediated by two kairomones present in the frass of the host insect, the potato tuberworm.”
    “Mutillids apparently use odour signals (kairomones) while actively running in suitable locations for finding such hosts, and must spend much time searching, with little prospect of finding numerous hosts.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Blend of Ancient Greek καιρός (kairós, “advantage; profit”, noun) + English pheromone, coined in the 1970 article “Allomones and Kairomones: Transspecific Chemical Messengers” by the American geneticist William Lacy Brown, Jr. (1913–1991), the German-American ecologist and entomologist Thomas Eisner (1929–2011), and the American ecologist Robert Harding Whittaker (1920–1980) which was published in BioScience: see the quotation.

Words you can make from kairomone

200+ playable · top: MANKIER (13 pts)

Best play mankier 13 points

7-letter words

8 words

6-letter words

20 words

5-letter words

43 words

4-letter words

96 words

3-letter words

32 words

Hooks

1 extension · 1 back

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