Definition: A sheet of saline water separated from the open sea by sand or shingle banks. The sheet of water between an offshore reef, especially of coral and mainland. The sheet of water within a ring or horseshoe shaped atoll.
Definition: The marine benthic biome (benthic meaning 'bottom') encompasses the seafloor and includes such areas as shores, littoral or intertidal areas, marine coral reefs, and the deep seabed.
Definition: Capable of creating a new organism by combining the genetic material of two gametes, which may come from two parent organisms or from a single organism, in the case of self-fertilizing hermaphrodites.
Definition: Repeated, thickened, raised structures on the shell or carapace surface, comparable to or greater than the thickness of the shell/carapace and covering a notable portion of it. Thickenings can be either radial, comarginal, axial or spiral.
Definition: Plications, undulations or other folds on the shell or carapace surface, less than the thickness of the shell/carapace and covering a small area of it, with thickness remaining consistent across folds.
Definition: A structural quality inhering in a bearer by virtue of the bearer's being thicker or more closely packed together; pressed tightly together.
Definition: A compound eye with no separation between the crystalline-cone layer and the retinula, each rhabdom receiving light only from its own corneal lens.
