Teredo
in botany, any disease in plants produced by the boring of insects.
In zoölogy and palæontology, a genus of Pholadidæ, worm-like mollusks, having a sucker-like foot with a foliaceous border, and long, cord-like gills; shell globular, open in front and behind, lodged at the inner extremity of a burrow, in whole or in part lined with shell; valves three-lobed, concentrically striated.
Known species; recent, 21, from Great Britain, Norway, the Black Sea, and the tropics, to 119 fathoms deep. T. navalis, the the ship ship worm, is a soft, cylindrical, somewhat vermiform mollusk, two or two and a half feet long, with two small shells at its anterior extremity. It bores into timber, and is exceedingly destructive to ships. In 1731 and 1732 it created alarm in Holland by boring into the piles constituting part of the defense of the country against the inroads of the sea.
Though teak is not so easily attacked as many other kinds of timber, yet it does not wholly escape. The best protection against the teredo is metal sheathing and broad-headed iron nails hammered into the wood. Fossil species 24, from the Lias onward. Used also of any individual of the genus.