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: muscular waves propelling an animal over a mucus layer overlaying the substrate; alternating regions of muscular contraction and expansion create traveling waves that shear the mucus, resulting in translation of the animal.
Definition: Direct developers are characterized by young that resemble the adult form even in early stages of development. The larval stages of marine direct developers generally have very low dispersal potential.
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, less than the thickness of the shell/carapace and covering a small area of it. Thickenings can be either radial, comarginal, axial or spiral.
Definition: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (USNM), Washington, District of Columbia, USA.\r\nNMNH and USNM both refer to the National Museum of Natural History. Collections are associated with one or the other acronym. US, the US National Herbarium, is a collection within the National Museum of Natural History. URL for main institutional website, http://www.mnh.si.edu/rc/\r\nURL for institutional specimen catalog, http://collections.mnh.si.edu/
Definition: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (USNM), Washington, District of Columbia, USA.\r\nNMNH and USNM both refer to the National Museum of Natural History. Collections are associated with one or the other acronym. US, the US National Herbarium, is a collection within the National Museum of Natural History. URL for main institutional website, http://www.mnh.si.edu/rc/\r\nURL for institutional specimen catalog, http://collections.mnh.si.edu/
Definition: Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Paris, France. URL for main institutional website: http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/foffice/science/science/sommaire.xsp
