- Industry: Government
- Number of terms: 30456
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
Obligate or required. For example, an obligatory cleaner fish relies entirely on this feeding mode to obtain nutrients; opposite of facultative.
Industry:Natural environment
Relating to the sagittal plane, which extends through the midline of a bilateral animal, dividing it into two equal halves.
Industry:Natural environment
The chronological series of changes, from a lower to a higher state of organization, which multicellular organisms undergo from the fertilised egg (zygote) to maturity.
Industry:Natural environment
The metabolic processes that consumes energy and involve the synthesis of larger, complex molecules from simpler ones.
Industry:Natural environment
The situation where a diver is at a depth or pressure for a long enough period of time (12 hours or longer) to have the partial pressures of the dissolved gases in the body at equilibrium with the partial pressure of the gases in the surrounding environment. Scientists are able to live in and work around underwater habitats for extended periods without the risk of developing decompression sickness (the bends). Divers breathe compressed air mixed with light, inert gases, such as helium. When the diver's blood becomes saturated with helium, the time required for decompression, even if the diver returns to the surface after a period of weeks, is no greater than that required after a dive lasting just a few hours.
Industry:Natural environment
A bluish, copper-containing respiratory pigment with an oxygen-carrying function similar to that of haemoglobin that is present in the blood of certain mollusks and arthropods.
Industry:Natural environment
A disk-like organelle with a double membrane, found in some protists and all green plant cells, that contains chlorophyll and is the site of photosynthesis.
Industry:Natural environment
A light sensitive organ in a minute vertical canal in the upper layer of the shell plate of a chiton.
Industry:Natural environment
A pigment in the skin of animals which determines skin and coat color. It is found in two chemically different forms: eumelanin (which produces brown and black) and phaeomelanin (which produces yellow and red). Melanin also provides protection against the damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation.
Industry:Natural environment
A soft coral in the order Pennatulacea and subclass Alcyonaria. A sea pansy is a colony of polyps having different forms and functions. A single, leaf-like, giant primary polyp up to two inches in diameter forms the anchoring stem (peduncle). This peduncle can be distended to better anchor the colony in the substrate.The primary polyp possesses secondary polyps, autozooids (feeding polyps) and siphonozooids (serve as intakes for water, which circulates within the colony and helps keep it upright) on the upper surface.The sea pansy is bioluminescent when disturbed, due to Green Fluorescent Protein.
Industry:Natural environment
