12 Comments

Of Terms in Bi­ol­ogy: Plank­tonic

by Elio

The word plank­tonic is widely used in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy for or­ganisms that are float­ing in bod­ies of wa­ter. It may be worth­while to pon­der its mean­ing. Ac­cord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia:"plank­ton con­sist of any drift­ing or­gan­isms (an­i­mals, plants, ar­chaea, or bac­te­ria) that in­habit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bod­ies of fresh wa­ter." So, what does pelagic mean? Wik­tionary says:"Liv­ing in the open sea rather than in coastal or in­land wa­ters." Clearly, micro­biologists use the term plank­tonic with­out the "pelagic" re­stric­tion, and in­clude any body of wa­ter, even that in a test tube. The word plank­ton is de­rived from the Greek word πλαγκτος ("plank­tos"), mean­ing wan­derer or drifter (thus also re­lated to planet).

Phase con­trast im­age of di­atoms. Source

What is the antonym of plank­tonic? Ses­sile comes to mind (i.e., per­ma­nently at­tached or estab­lished, not free to move about). Its et­y­mol­ogy? From the Latin ses­silis, from ses­sus, past par­tici­ple of sedēre, to sit. But at­tached or cling­ing would do as well. Not rel­e­vant here but of lin­guis­tic in­terest, the antonym of ses­sile is vagile, hav­ing free­dom to move about. I had never heard of it. I stopped be­ing vagile years ago.

If ses­sile does not ap­peal to you, per­haps ad­her­ing would do. Or maybe we should in­vent a new term. How about biofilmic or biofil­matic? Want to vote it in or out? Let us know.

Editor's note: The im­age of a di­atom chain pre­vi­ously dis­played here was used with­out per­mis­sion of the photo­grapher and has been re­moved. If any blog vis­i­tors have down­loaded that im­age, they should be aware that it is un­der copy­right and that per­mis­sion and pay­ment of a fee is re­quired for its use. Our apolo­gies to the pho­tog­ra­pher. 

 

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Dale Hoyt
17 years ago

How about nek­ton, the term for those or­gan­isms that can ac­tively swim in the pelagic zone. (There is also neuston — or­gan­isms re­stricted to the sur­face film.)
Elio re­pleis:
Hold on. We're go­ing to post some­thing about "nue­ston "next.

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Mark O. Martin
17 years ago

The real ques­tion, Elio, is what is the na­ture of the "biofil­mome" in­volved.
I apol­o­gize in ad­vance for the scorn that will be heaped upon that com­ment!
Elio replies:
Hold on. There's more com­ing (when it comes to ma­rine mi­cro­bial terms).

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Nathan Myers
17 years ago

Let me pro­pose "pota­tonic", as a syn­onym for ses­sile, but im­ply­ing that the sta­tion­ary po­si­tion re­sults from not mak­ing the ef­fort to move, rather than from ac­tual ad­he­sion.

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Psi Wavefunction
17 years ago

Does 'ben­thic' work?
Elio replies:
Ben­thic refers to the bot­tom sur­face of the oceans, not to the wa­ter col­umn.

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M M
17 years ago

On the mat­ter of 'biofilmic' or 'biofil­matic', I would have to dis­agree to their us­age as an all-en­com­pass­ing antonym to 'plank­tonic', given that sur­face-at­tached cells might not nec­es­sar­ily form biofilms (al­though they cer­tainly have the po­ten­tial to form as such). Also, 'plank­tonic' seems to re­fer to the in­di­vid­ual cell and its be­hav­iors, while 'biofilmic', etc. more im­plies a con­sor­tium of or­gan­isms — thus weak­en­ing the antonymic re­la­tion­ship be­tween 'plank­tonic' and the pro­posed terms.

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Dee Breger
17 years ago

Dear Elio, Merry and all read­ers,
I ap­pre­ci­ate that you are en­joy­ing my im­age of an Antarc­tic di­atom chain but like all my im­ages (and most other texts and pho­tos found on the web un­less they are specif­i­cally noted as be­ing in the pub­lic do­main), my im­age is pro­tected by copy­right and this use can be con­sid­ered copy­right in­fringe­ment be­cause it was used with­out my knowl­edge or per­mis­sion, and no li­cense fee was paid for its use. Like other artists and pho­tog­ra­phers, li­cens­ing and sell­ing my im­ages is my in­come. Please ei­ther delete this im­age from your site and alert read­ers not to use it if they lifted it be­fore re­moval, or con­tact me to arrange a fee.
Thanks,
Dee

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Mark O. Martin
17 years ago

I tried to leave a note here to ask if we should start the field of "biofil­momics," but it didn't seem to take. Un­less the Mi­cro­bial Good Taste Po­lice deleted it! Too many "omics" spoils the field, per­haps?

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Hugo Sarmento
16 years ago

Hi,
I would say that the antonym of plank­ton refers to or­gan­isms that do not drift in the cur­rent, thus swim­ming or­gan­isms, and the cor­rect word for that would be NEKTON: (wikipedia) Nek­ton refers to the ag­gre­gate of ac­tively swim­ming aquatic or­gan­isms in a body of wa­ter (usu­ally oceans or lakes) able to move in­de­pen­dently of wa­ter cur­rents.
Con­cern­ing the 'at­tached' mi­cro­biota, it de­pends on which or­gan­isms and on what these or­gan­isms are at­tached; few ex­am­ples: phy­to­ben­thos, epi­zoic, ...

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Website SEO
16 years ago

Ma­rine cal­ci­fy­ing or­gan­isms in­clude strictly plank­tonic as well as mero­plank­tonic or­gan­isms. Mero­plank­ton spend only part of their life in a plank­tonic stage and in­clude ben­thic lar­vae.

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Jokes
16 years ago

Great! Thanks for the great in­for­ma­tive post and your ef­fort.
I think the above ar­ti­cle is valu­able for all con­cerned peo­ple. For me the In­for­ma­tions are re­ally re­ally use­ful. I've Book­marked this page for fu­ture ref­er­ence.
Thank you
Robin Jokes

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Green Tea
16 years ago

Won­der­ful! I re­ally did not think about this topic be­fore from your point of view. But now I am think­ing about your idea. I've also dis­cussed with my friends about your post.
Thank you Elio. I've book­marked this page for my ref­er­ence.
Mandy Green Tea

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Quality Kukri
16 years ago

This is my first time i visit here. I found so many in­ter­est­ing stuff in your blog, es­pe­cially its dis­cus­sion. From the tons of com­ments on your ar­ti­cles, I guess I am not the only one hav­ing all the leisure here! Keep up the ex­cel­lent work.
Thank You
Kukri­mart

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