Definition: A sheet of saline water separated from the open sea by sand or shingle banks. The sheet of water between an offshore reef, especially of coral and mainland. The sheet of water within a ring or horseshoe shaped atoll.
Definition: An oceanic island, often having a characteristic ring-like shape surrounding a lagoon. Atolls are formed when coral reef grows around a volcanic island that later subsides into the ocean.
Definition: A wetland, featuring grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants (possibly with low-growing woody plants) in a context of shallow water.
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: A structural quality inhering in a bearer by virtue of the bearer's being thicker or more closely packed together; pressed tightly together.
Definition: A compound eye with no separation between the crystalline-cone layer and the retinula, each rhabdom receiving light only from its own corneal lens.
