Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The collection of organisms that spend all stages of their life cycle as plankton, drifting freely in the water.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The plants and animals that pass their whole life swimming or floating in the water, considered collectively and in contrast with those that float or swim for only a part of their lives, passing the rest upon or in the bottom. See
hemibenthic ,holebenthic ,hemiplankton ,holoplanktonic ,planktonic .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biology Any organism that spends all of its life-cycle as
plankton
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Within the plankton, holoplankton are those that spend their entire life cycle in the plankton, while meroplankton are those organisms that are only planktonic for part of their lives (usually the larval stage), and then move into the nekton or a benthic habitat.
Plankton 2008
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Post-transport ballast water contains high densities of both holoplankton, organisms such as dinoflagellates and jellyfish that spend their entire life as plankton, and meroplankton, the temporary larval stages of crustaceans, worms, and fish.
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Post-transport ballast water contains high densities of both holoplankton, organisms such as dinoflagellates and jellyfish that spend their entire life as Figure 2b.
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