How to Use gastropod in a Sentence

gastropod

noun
  • The discovery of the excrement is believed to be the first case of gastropods feeding on the rust.
    Maria Cramer, New York Times, 11 Mar. 2020
  • The ranger explained the anatomy and diet of the slug to Cleveland and the group of young campers, and asked if any of them was brave enough to kiss the slimy gastropod.
    The Salt Lake Tribune, 16 Sep. 2020
  • After that were barnacles, then gastropods [such as snails and slugs], then bivalves such as clams.
    Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 30 Aug. 2019
  • The resulting creation, an art car called The Golden Mean, is a golden gastropod that glows in the dark and shoots rings of fire from its feelers.
    Lewis Wallace, WIRED, 29 Aug. 2008
  • The only way for this laggard gastropod to rack up its air miles is to be eaten by a bird and excreted out the other end.
    Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 18 Oct. 2011
  • The free-floating creatures eat pelagic gastropods, notably snails.
    Gary Robbins, San Diego Union-Tribune, 19 Apr. 2023
  • The carrier shell snail, a gastropod, earned its name by attaching shells and sea clutter to its own shell as protection and disguise.
    National Geographic, 12 Jan. 2023
  • Sea angels’ lovely outward appearance and name belie their status as a kind of sea slug, related to other forms of snails in the gastropod class.
    National Geographic, 7 Sep. 2017
  • But a potential solution to one of the biggest threats of coffee production has been found in the bright orange excrement of a voracious gastropod called the Asian trampsnail.
    Maria Cramer, New York Times, 11 Mar. 2020
  • But the gastropods weren’t visiting for a tropical vacation in French Polynesia.
    Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 May 2023
  • Along the shoreline, billions of marine invertebrates—barnacles, mussels, oysters, clams, gastropods, crabs, sea stars—cooked alive.
    Marion Renault, The New Republic, 3 May 2023
  • This week's question: Florida has been invaded by the giant African land snail, a banana-sized gastropod that devours foliage, gnaws on buildings, and transmits diseases and parasites in its trail of slime.
    The Week Staff, The Week, 30 June 2023
  • Scallops, for example, showcase a complex system of camouflage, with a colored shell on top and a white shell on the bottom; most gastropods are born with trapdoor-like devices called an operculum, which protect them from predators.
    Susan Glaser, cleveland.com, 10 Jan. 2018
  • Tully has been compared to gastropods (slugs and snails), conodonts (an extinct group of jawless vertebrates), polychaetes (segmented marine worms), nemerteans (ribbon worms), and nectocarids (a squid-like Cambrian organism) in the ensuing decades.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 25 Apr. 2023
  • Invertebrate groups that experienced diversification included horseshoe crab-like trilobites, clams, clam-like brachiopods and a group called gastropods that included snails and slugs.
    Will Dunham, Washington Post, 24 Sep. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gastropod.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: