Definition: microscopic algae, typically found in freshwater and marine systems, living in both the water column and sediment. They are unicellular species which exist individually, or in chains or groups.
Definition: microscopic algae, typically found in freshwater and marine systems, living in both the water column and sediment. They are unicellular species which exist individually, or in chains or groups.
Definition: Living in the fluid medium (water or air) but unable to maintain their position or distribution independently of the movement of the water/air mass (adapted from Lincoln et al., 1998).
Definition: aquatic organisms that construct and inhabit simple unbranched vertical shafts with only one opening to the surface. These are primarily above-sediment filter-feeders, surface deposit-feeders, and subsurface deposit-feeders (head-down, conveyor-belt feeders)
Definition: aquatic organisms that construct and inhabit simple unbranched vertical shafts with only one opening to the surface. These are primarily above-sediment filter-feeders, surface deposit-feeders, and subsurface deposit-feeders (head-down, conveyor-belt feeders)
Definition: The marine benthic biome (benthic meaning 'bottom') encompasses the seafloor and includes such areas as shores, littoral or intertidal areas, marine coral reefs, and the deep seabed.
Definition: Expressions of the estuarine biome occur at wide lower courses of a rivers where they flow into a sea. Estuaries experience tidal flows and their water is a changing mixture of fresh and salt.
Definition: Pools formed as a high tide comes in over a rocky shore. Water fills depressions in the ground, which turn into isolated pools as the tide retreats.
Definition: Direct developers are characterized by young that resemble the adult form even in early stages of development. The larval stages of marine direct developers generally have very low dispersal potential.
Definition: An organism that moves through the water column via movements of its fins, legs or appendages, via undulatory movements of the body or via jet propulsion; includes pelagic phases during reproduction (swarming at the surface)
Definition: A built-structure inhabited by an organism and essential to its survival, but not part of its body, composed of hardened (either rigid or flexible) secretions, with or without the addition of embedded particles, with those particles either selectively collected from the environment or passively becoming glued during formation (pers. comm. Read, G.).
Definition: A structural quality inhering in a bearer by virtue of the bearer's being thicker or more closely packed together; pressed tightly together.
Definition: Skeletal support provided by hydrostatic pressure from a fluid filled cavity (e.g. the coelum) surrounded by muscles. Hydrostatic pressure provides skeletal support in sea anemones, jellyfish, nematodes, annelids, echinoderms, and other groups.
Definition: a sub-group of suspension feeding animals that feed by straining suspended matter and food particles from water, typically by passing the water over a specialized filtering structure
