Polyzoon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A tiny colonial animal that lives attached to underwater surfaces and filters food from the water through a crown of tentacles
2. Any member of the bryozoan group, a sessile aquatic invertebrate that forms colonies of individual zooids encased in a hard or leathery covering
3. A minute filter-feeding invertebrate that grows in branching or encrusting colonies on rocks, shells and seaweed in marine and freshwater habitats

Etymology: Polyzoon is a compound built from two Greek parts. The first, "poly-", comes from Ancient Greek "polús", meaning "many" or "much", a word that traces back to the same ancient root that gave English words like "full" and "plenty". The second, "-zoon", comes from Greek "zōion", meaning "animal" or "living creature". Put together, the name describes a creature made of many animals, which is exactly what these organisms are. Each polyzoon is a colony of tiny individuals called zooids, typically no bigger than a millimetre, living in a shared structure. The name was coined by scientists who needed a single term for the whole colony rather than for any one member, so the "many" in the word refers to the many zooids that together make up one organism.

Synonyms: bryozoan