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meiofauna

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Small animals of benthic sediments, such as nematodes and copepods.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A type of interstitial fauna, such as psammon, found in rock fissures, between the grains of loose sediments, on algae, etc. It is a part of the microfauna.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek meiōn, less; see mei- in Indo-European roots + fauna.]

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Examples

  • These beasts, called meiofauna, are the smallest of multicellular organisms, about the size of a (single-celled) ameba.

    Traveling Sharks 2008

  • His research at the University of Gent, where he founded the Marine BiologyDepartment, centered on the ecology of meiofauna.

    Contributor: Carlo H.R. Heip 2010

  • Amazingly, there are as many different species of meiofauna -- about 3 million -- as of all other earthly creatures combined, says biologist Paul Montagne of the University of Texas.

    Traveling Sharks 2008

  • The smaller meiofauna (mm-sized animals) is less well described and, as an example, a survey of the benthos in the North Sea in 1986 yielded about 40% of benthic copepod species new to science.

    Marine biodiversity 2007

  • The smaller meiofauna (mm-sized animals) is less well described and, as an example, a survey of the benthos in the

    Featured Articles - Encyclopedia of Earth 2010

  • The time it takes to isolate individuals from environmental samples and then extract DNA from each individual is one of the problems with generating molecular data from meiofauna such as eutardigrades and bdelloid rotifers.

    BioMed Central - Latest articles Michael Robeson 2009

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  1. meiofaunal

Comments

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  • hernesheir commented on the word meiofauna

    All the vowels, plus a spare.

    January 29, 2010

  • bilby commented on the word meiofauna

    Mollusque-mon 'e don't like spares.

    January 30, 2010

  • ruzuzu commented on the word meiofauna

    See panvocalic miscellany.

    January 30, 2010

  • bilby commented on the word meiofauna

    Mollusque-mon 'e tink of evryting.

    January 30, 2010

  • mollusque commented on the word meiofauna

    See meiofauny (Polish).

    January 30, 2010