noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A group of marine or freshwater, typically benthic organisms that are intermediate in terms of size between macrofauna and microfauna, and which can pass through a 1 mm sieve, but are retained by a 45 μm sieve.

Synonyms

All synonyms

meiobenthos

Etymology

From meio- + fauna. Meio- is from Ancient Greek μεῖον (meîon, “less”).

Related phrases

interstitial fauna

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.