2. Among insects belonging to the higher orders; such as, the hymenoptera ( order of insects, including the bees, ants, sawflies, etc.), diptera (insects with two pairs of wings, the second pair being modified into balancing organs), lepidoptera (order of insects including the butterflies and moths), the pupa is inactive and takes no food.
In the lower orders it is active and takes food, and differs little from the imago (sexually mature stage) except in the rudimentary state of the sexual organs, and of the wings in those that have wings when adult.
The term pupa is sometimes applied to other invertebrates in analogous stages of development.
3. A genus of air-breathing land snails having an elongated spiral shell. coarctate, or obtected, pupa, a pupa which is incased in the dried-up skin of the larva, as in many diptera.4. Masked pupa, a pupa whose limbs are bound down and partly concealed by a chitinous covering, as in lepidoptera.
Historical background and etymology of the word pupa
The great naturalist Linnaeus coined this technical term for "an insect in the third and usually quiescent state preceding that of the perfect insect."
Pupa comes from the Latin pupa, "little girl or doll". The coinage has been called "a stroke of poetic genius", one writer noting: "If you look at the underside of a moth's pupa [you will] see the shape of its face, eyes and embryonic wings like little arms, all wrapped as if in swaddling clothes which emphasize its likeness to a doll."