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: 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: 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: A structural quality inhering in a bearer by virtue of the bearer's being thicker or more closely packed together; pressed tightly together.
Definition: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (Zoological Collections) (ZMB). Berlin, Germany. URL for main institutional website: http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de Formerly Zoologisches Museum der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Definition: Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Paris, France. URL for main institutional website: http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/foffice/science/science/sommaire.xsp
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.
