NOUN
- minute free-swimming freshwater copepod having a large median eye and pear-shaped body and long antennae used in swimming; important in some food chains and as intermediate hosts of parasitic worms that affect man e.g. Guinea worms
- minute freshwater crustacean having a round body enclosed in a transparent shell; moves about like a flea by means of hairy branched antennae
How To Use water flea In A Sentence
- In addition, numbers of gynandromorphic daphnia rose when they were exposed to a particular pesticide - pyriproxyfen - and the effect increased when the water fleas were also exposed to warmer temperatures.
- There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea.
- In the lab, Diamond recently showed a visitor how he exposed tiny water fleas called daphnia to titanium dioxide nanoparticles. News & Features from Minnesota Public Radio
- The same pattern of asexual reproduction occurs in water fleas, aphids and even a few lizards.
- In some habitats, in addition to the aquatic insect larvae, crustaceans such as freshwater shrimp, crayfishes, and tiny free-swimming “water fleas” are important food items. Trout and Salmon of North America
- Similarly, the tiny water flea develops a large protective ‘helmet’ when predaceous larvae of the Chaoborus fly are present in the water nearby.
- And watched three-spined stickleback fish hunt water fleas, to the accompaniment of either white noise calibrated to match the noise level of speedboats or a silent track as a control.