Nekton

Nekton or necton refers to the aggregate of actively swimming aquatic organisms in a body of water.

The term was first proposed and used by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1890 in his book Plankton-Studien where he contrasted it with plankton, the aggregate of passively floating, drifting, or somewhat motile organisms present in a body of water, primarily tiny algae and bacteria, small eggs and larvae of marine organisms, and protozoa and other minute consumers. Today it is considered an obsolete term because it does not allow for the meaningful quantifiable distinction between these two groups. Modern biologists no longer use it.

As a guideline, nekton were larger and tend to swim largely at biologically high Reynolds numbers (>10³ and up beyond 10⁹), where inertial flows are the rule, and eddies (vortices) are easily shed. Plankton, on the other hand, are small and, if they swim at all, do so at biologically low Reynolds numbers (0.001 to 10), where the viscous behavior of water dominates, and reversible flows are the rule. Organisms such as jellyfish and others were considered plankton when they are very small and swim at low Reynolds numbers, and considered nekton as they grew large enough to swim at high Reynolds numbers. Many animals considered classic examples of nekton (e.g., Mola mola, squid, marlin) start out life as tiny members of the plankton and then, it was argued, gradually transitioned to nekton as they grew.

Oceanic nekton

Oceanic nekton comprised animals largely from three clades

• Vertebrates formed the largest contribution, these animals are supported by either bones or cartilage.
• Mollusks are animals such as squids and scallops.
• Crustaceans are animals such as lobsters and crabs.

There are organisms whose initial part of their lives were identified as being planktonic but when they grew and increased in body size they become nektonic. A typical example was the medusa of the jellyfish.

See also

• neuston (the organisms, typically microscopic, that float near the surface of the water)
• pleuston (all organisms that float near the surface of the water)
• plankton (the organisms that float and drift within the water)
• benthos (the organisms at the bottom of a body of water)

External links

• Stefan Nehring and Ute Albrecht (1997): „hell und das redundante Benthon: Neologismen in der deutschsprachigen Limnologie“. In: Lauterbornia H. 31: 17-30, Dinkelscherben, December 1997 E-Text (PDF-Datei)

The dictionary definition of nekton at Wiktionary