Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Belonging to the plankton; floating or swimming.
  • Of or pertaining to the animals and plants that float or swim in the water: as, planktonic problems.

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

  • adjective Of or pertaining to plankton.
  • adjective Floating in the open sea rather than living on the seafloor.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to plankton

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From plankton +‎ -ic, after German planktonisch.

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Examples

  • Bacteria that grow in biofilm communities can be as much as 10,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than the so-called planktonic bacteria, which circulate around the body as individual cells.

    The Earth Times Online Newspaper 2010

  • Change, Howard and his colleagues collected microscopic marine animals - called planktonic foraminifera, or forams - from the

    Articles of Health 2009

  • With funding from the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Howard and his colleagues collected microscopic marine animals - called planktonic foraminifera, or forams - from the South Tasman Rise region of the Southern Ocean.

    EcoEarth.Info Environment RSS Newsfeed 2009

  • Shifts in thermal regimes that result in increased local densities of hosts, especially intermediate ones such as planktonic or benthic invertebrates, are also very likely to increase parasite species diversity [19].

    Impacts on arctic freshwater and anadromous fisheries 2009

  • Most of the phenotypic characteristics of animals and plants on Earth are related to the force of gravity, while most of the characteristics of the planktonic life in Water are generally indifferent to the pull of gravity.

    Ancient Predator Revealed! 2009

  • Truncatella breathes with a gill (see my dissection here), but lives its entire life on land near the sea, while Melampus breathes with a lung, lives at the edge of the sea, but enters it to reproduce via planktonic veliger larvae.

    Archive 2009-01-01 AYDIN 2009

  • Measurements indicate elevated turbulent dissipation — comparable with levels caused by winds and tides — in the vicinity of large populations of planktonic animals swimming together1.

    charles darwin (the physicist) was right 2009

  • Not a blind bean, he says, smirking planktonic into the the oldest soup in the known universe—

    Unfathomable Mammals Marc Vincenz 2011

  • Measurements indicate elevated turbulent dissipation — comparable with levels caused by winds and tides — in the vicinity of large populations of planktonic animals swimming together1.

    tingilinde: 2009

  • He has a special interest in planktonic ciliates, especially tintinnids which display an amazing variety of forms.

    Contributor: John R. Dolan 2010

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