Definitions

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

  • noun Microscopic or very small organisms, such as protozoans, that live in soil or benthic sediments.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fauna in which all the animals are of minute or diminutive size; a congeries of microscopic animals, or sometimes a depauperated fauna.

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

  • noun The smallest of the faunal size divisions, including mainly microorganisms but also sometimes applied to the tiniest species of animal groups such as ticks, insects, etc.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From micro- (“small, tiny”) +‎ fauna (“animals”).

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