Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Zooplankton
/ˌzoʊəˈplæŋktən/noun
The small drifting animals of open water, from copepods to jellyfish larvae.
The Greek roots
ζῷον
zôion
animal, living thing
πλαγκτός
planktós
wandering, drifting
Literally: “drifting animals”
The story of the word
Made to stand beside phytoplankton once biologists had split the drift by diet. Most of it is too small to see without a net and a lens. Much of it also rises hundreds of metres towards the surface at dusk and sinks again before dawn, a nightly commute that adds up to the largest movement of animals on the planet.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- around 1900
Same family
zoologyzodiacprotozoanplankton
In a sentence
The net came up brown with zooplankton, mostly copepods.