Planktivores

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Organisms that feed mainly on plankton, the tiny drifting plants and animals found in water
2. Creatures whose diet consists chiefly of microscopic plankton floating in seas, lakes and rivers
3. Animals, often fish or filter feeders, that survive by eating the small drifting life forms known as plankton

Etymology: "Planktivores" is the plural of "planktivore," a noun for an animal that feeds on plankton. The word is built from two parts: "plankton," the drifting microscopic life of the oceans and lakes, and the suffix "-vore," which comes from Latin "vorare," meaning "to devour" or "to swallow whole." That Latin verb is the source of the "-vore" in "carnivore" and "herbivore," and so the new word follows an established pattern. The suffix's own history is longer than the word it helps form. "-Vore" is a modern English combining form, drawn from the Latin "vorāre" and its agent-forming relatives, and it reached English as a productive element that scientists could attach to almost any food source. Its use in biology and ecology grew from that same pattern, letting researchers name a diet in a single compound.