As I write these posts, I try to avoid using too much incomprehensible scientific jargon. However, jargon exists for a reason, and as we get more in-depth through time, I will introduce a number of terms that I find particularly useful or interesting. When I put a term in bold lettering, I have put its definition in hover-text. That is, if you want to know what it means, just place your cursor over it and wait. Test this phrase. But I’m starting to realize that: (A) This escaped the notice of many people, and (B) It’d be nice to collect all these terms in one place. So here’s a glossary. I’m also including terms that I’ve explicitly defined in my posts. If there are any words that you think belong here or that I should add a hover-definition to, let me know.
| Word/phrase | Definition | Blog posts |
|---|---|---|
| calyx (pl. calyces) | The cup-shaped depression inside a corallite that holds an individual coral polyp. | |
| clade | A group of organisms that are more closely related to one another than to any other organism | |
| cnida (pl. cnidae) | An organelle that contains a harpoon-like structure that cnidarians use to catch prey and defend themselves. | |
| cnidarian | One of the most basic animal groupings, including jellyfish, sea anemones, corals, and hydroids. | |
| congeneric | A species that belongs to the same genus as something else. Thus, something that is closely related. | |
| confounding factor | A potentially uninteresting variable whose effect is hard to distinguish from that of another, potentially more interesting variable. | |
| coral bleaching | The state of a coral animal that is in danger because has lost its symbiotic algae, generally due to stress from high water temperatures. | |
| corallite | Skeletal structures formed by individual coral polyps. | |
| corallivore | Animals that eat coral | |
| ecosystem engineer | An organism that drastically modifies its surrounding physical habitat | |
| holobiont | Not a cult group, alien invader, or indie band, but the collective term for a host organism and its associated microbial community, or microbiome | |
| hypothesis | An idea about how things work, which is based on previous observations and that can be tested after making more observations. After many more observations are made that support a given hypothesis, it generally becomes accepted as a theory. | |
| macrobe | Not really an accepted word, but it’s meant to be the complement of ‘microbe’. Whereas microbes are tiny organisms, macrobes would include us and all other macroscopic forms of life. | |
| microbiome | The entire community of microorganisms associated with a particular environment. For instance, the human microbiome is the set of all of the microbes that are on or in our bodies. | |
| nematocyst | A synonym for cnida | |
| pathogen | Disease-causing microorganisms, including various bacteria, viruses, and fungi. | |
| photosynthesis | The chemical process by which plants and microbes harness light energy to produce food. | |
| phylum | The largest grouping of animal types. Other phyla include Chordata, which contains all the familiar fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals; and Arthropoda, which includes all insects, arachnids, and crustaceans, from beetles to spiders to lobsters. Cnidaria is thus a very large grouping. | |
| polyp | A coral ‘individual’, which is structurally similar to a single anemone. Many coral polyps are fused together in a colony | |
| sub-cellular | A structure that is smaller than a cell, most often referring to part of a cell. | |
| symbiont | A microbe that is closely associated with another organism. Generally used to refer specifically to a microbe that confers beneficial properties to its host. | |
| symbiosis | A close association between organisms that involves frequent physical contact and the nearly complete dependency of at least one partner on the other | |
| vector | Organisms that host and transmit pathogens to other species |
