Definition: A taxon is Data Deficient when there is inadequate information to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution and/or population status. A taxon in this category may be well studied, and its biology well known, but appropriate data on abundance and/or distribution are lacking. Data Deficient is therefore \r\nnot a category of threat. Listing of taxa in this category indicates that more information is \r\nrequired and acknowledges the possibility that future research will show that threatened \r\nclassification is appropriate. It is important to make positive use of whatever data are available. In many cases great care should be exercised in choosing between DD and a threatened status. If the range of a taxon is suspected to be relatively circumscribed, and a considerable period of time has elapsed since the last record of the taxon, threatened status may well be justified.
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: Expressions of the estuarine biome occur at wide lower courses of a rivers where they flow into a sea. Estuaries experience tidal flows and their water is a changing mixture of fresh and salt.
Definition: A habitat that is in or on a body of water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids (<0.5 grams dissolved salts per litre).
Definition: A habitat that is in or on a sea or ocean containing high concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids (typically >35 grams dissolved salts per litre).
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: 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: Relative to pinhole eyes, lens eyes have greatly improved resolution and image brightness. The lens converges incoming rays of light, thereby reducing the angle over which each photoreceptor receives light, and forming an image focused on the retina. Most lens eyes have "accommodation"; they can focus an image either by physically moving the lens toward or away from the retina or by using eye muscles to adjust the shape of the lens.
