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Information about Benthos

Seagrass growing off the coast of the Florida Keys.
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Giant clam along the Great Barrier Reef.
Benthos are the organisms which live on, in, or near the seabed, also known as the benthic zone.[1] Although the term derived from the Greek for "depths of the sea"<ref name="caml" />, the term is also used in freshwater biology to refer to organisms at the bottoms of freshwater bodies of water, such as lakes, rivers, and streams.[2]

Animals belonging to the benthos are sometimes referred to as zoobenthos, while plants are referred to as phytobenthos.

Benthos can be categorized according to size:
  • macrobenthos, size > 1 mm
  • meiobenthos, size < 1 mm and > 32 µm
  • microbenthos, size < 32 µm
  • epibenthos lives on top of the sediment
  • hyperbenthos lives just above the sediment
Benthic organisms play an important role as a food source for fish and some also for humans.

Examples of benthic organisms are sea stars, oysters, clams, sea cucumbers, brittle stars and sea anemones.



References

1. ^ Benthos from the Census of Antarctic Marine Life website
2. ^ About the North American Benthological Society, from that organization's website
The seabed (also sea floor , seafloor, or ocean floor) is the bottom of the ocean. At the bottom of the continental slope is the continental rise, which is caused by sediment cascading down the continental slope.
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benthic zone is the lowest level of a body of water, such as an ocean or a lake. It is inhabited by organisms that live in close relationship with (if not physically attached to) the ground, called benthos or benthic organisms.
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The Greek language has contributed to the English vocabulary in three ways:
  1. directly as an immediate donor,
  2. indirectly through other intermediate language(s), as an original donor (mainly through Latin and French), and
  3. with modern coinages or new Greek.

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Freshwater biology is a field of biology that studies the life and ecosystems of freshwater habitats. This includes animal, plant and microbial life in lakes, rivers and ponds. Fresh water habitats can be classified by temperature, light penetration, and the vegetation.
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body of water is any significant accumulation of water such as an ocean, a lake, or a river, usually covering the Earth or another planet. Some bodies of water can be man-made, or artificial, such as a pond, lake or harbor, but most are naturally occurring geographical features.
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Zoobenthos are the animal subset of organisms more generally referred to as benthos.
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oyster is used for a number of different groups of bivalve mollusks, most of which live in marine or brackish water. The shell consists of two usually highly calcified valves which surround a soft body.
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clam is a kind of mollusc that has a shell divided into two pieces called valves, in other words, a clam is a bivalve mollusc.

The word "clam" has no real taxonomic significance in biology. However in the USA the word can sometimes be used to mean any bivalve mollusc.
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Holothuroidea

Orders
  • Subclass Apodacea
  • Apodida
  • Molpadiida
  • Subclass Aspidochirotacea

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Ophiuroidea
Gray, 1840

Orders
ME Oegophiurida
Ophiurida
Phrynophiurida

Brittle stars are echinoderms, closely related to starfish. They crawl across the sea-floor using their flexible arms as "legs" for locomotion.
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Actiniaria

Diversity
46 families

Suborders

Endocoelantheae
Nyantheae
Protantheae
Ptychodacteae
Sea anemones are a group of water dwelling, predatory animals of the order Actiniaria
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