Copepod definition

kōpə-pŏd
copepods
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Frequency:
Any of numerous small marine or freshwater crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda, including parasitic and free-living forms.
noun
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Any of a class (Copepoda) of small, sometimes parasitic, crustaceans living in either salt or fresh water.
noun
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Any of various very small crustaceans of the subclass Copepoda, having an elongated body and a forked tail. Unlike most crustaceans, copepods lack a carapace over the back and do not have compound eyes. They are abundant in both salt and fresh water, and are an important food source for many water animals. Copepods include the water fleas.
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Any of very many small crustaceans, of the subclass Copepoda, that are widely distributed and ecologically important; they include the water fleas.
noun
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Other Word Forms

Noun

Singular:
copepod
Plural:
copepods

Origin of copepod

  • From New Latin Cōpēpoda order name Greek kōpē oar kap- in Indo-European roots New Latin -poda -pod

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Copepod Sentence Examples

  • I approach the business end cautiously, keen to photograph the parasitic copepod that is found on each shark's eye.

  • B, Udonella caligorum, attached to the ova of the copepod Caligus.

  • Brown or even blood-red stripes have been observed in the North Atlantic when swarms of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus were present; the brown alga Trichodesmium erythraeum, as its name suggests, can change the blue of the tropical seas to red; swarms of diatoms may produce olive-green patches in the ocean, while some other forms of minute life have at times been observed to give the colour of milk to large stretches of the ocean surface.

  • In appearance an ordinary Copepod is divided into foreand hind-body, of its eleven segments the composite first being the head, the next five constituting the thorax, and the last five the abdomen.

  • To the extreme development of the carapace in Laura, as compared with the segmented body, it would be difficult to find among crustaceans any analogy more striking than that of the great ovarial expansions in Nicothoe astaci, the little copepod parasite of the common lobster.

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