Definition: Colonial organisms are clonal colonies composed of many physically connected, interdependent individuals. The subunits of colonial organisms can be unicellular, as in the alga Volvox (a coenobium), or multicellular, as in the phylum Bryozoa. The former type may have been the first step toward multicellular organisms
Definition: number of homologous sets of chromosomes in the nucleus or primary chromosome-containing compartment of the cell, each set essentially coding for all the biological traits of the organism.
