Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Macroscopic animals of soil or benthic sediments that are greater than about 1 or 2 millimeters in size, such as earthworms or polychaetes.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A term applied to large
animals , not quite large enough to be consideredmegafauna but larger thanmicrofauna . Some include larger species ofinsects andannelids in this group.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Small marine animals called macrofauna -- snails, worms, clams, and other creatures no bigger than a pencil eraser -- live and feed in the seafloor sediment.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories PhysOrg Team 2010
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Small marine animals called macrofauna -- snails, worms, clams, and other creatures no bigger than a pencil eraser -- live and feed in the seafloor sediment.
PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories PhysOrg Team 2010
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Benthic invertebrate macrofauna of the eastern Bering/Chukchi continental shelf.
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The continual supply of oxygen could support roughly 3 billion kilograms of macrofauna, assuming similar oxygen demands to terrestrial fish.
Europa Capable of Supporting Life, Scientist Says | Universe Today 2009
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Greenberg says that the concentrations of oxygen would be great enough to support not only microorganisms, but also “macrofauna”, that is, more complex animal-like organisms which have greater oxygen demands.
Europa Capable of Supporting Life, Scientist Says | Universe Today 2009
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But polar cod, capelin, sand eel (Ammodytes spp.), and squid (Illex illecebrosus) are probably the most important pelagic/semi-pelagic macrofauna acting as forage for fish such as Greenland halibut and cod, marine mammals, and seabirds.
Fisheries and aquaculture in the Central North Atlantic (Iceland and Greenland) 2009
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These are low in diversity but high in populations for some of the macrofauna, some of which are relicts of earlier periods, others at the extremes of their latitudinal and environmental distribution.
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The low number of benthic macrofauna species in the arctic intertidal zone is usually attributed to ice scouring
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In the deep Arctic Ocean, the number of benthic macrofauna species varies from 0 to 11
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And among hundreds of species of macrofauna (animals about the size of an earthworm) collected in different areas, 50 to 85 percent were unrecognized.
unknown title 2009
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