benthos
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θɒsBased on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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benthos or benthon (ˈbɛnθɒs) ![[Click for IPA pronunciation guide]](http://static.sfdict.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif) | |
| —n | |
| 1. | the animals and plants living at the bottom of a sea or lake |
| 2. | the bottom of a sea or lake |
| [C19: from Greek: depth; related to bathus deep] | |
| benthon or benthon | |
| —n | |
| [C19: from Greek: depth; related to bathus deep] | |
| 'benthic or benthon | |
| —adj | |
| 'benthal or benthon | |
| —adj | |
| ben'thonic or benthon | |
| —adj | |
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| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle. |
benthos
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benthos (běn'thŏs') Pronunciation Key
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Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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benthos
the assemblage of organisms inhabiting the seafloor. Benthic epifauna live upon the seafloor or upon bottom objects; the so-called infauna live within the sediments of the seafloor. By far the best-studied benthos are the macrobenthos, those forms larger than 1 mm (0.04 inch), which are dominated by polychaete worms, pelecypods, anthozoans, echinoderms, sponges, ascidians, and crustaceans. Meiobenthos, those organisms between 0.1 and 1 mm in size, include polychaetes, pelecypods, copepods, ostracodes, cumaceans, nematodes, turbellarians, and foraminiferans. The microbenthos, smaller than 0.1 mm, include bacteria, diatoms, ciliates, amoeba, and flagellates.
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