Techniques in the Collection, Preservation and Morphological Identification of Freshwater Zooplankton

The word plankton (Greek for “wanderer” or “drifter”) was coined by the German Marine Biologist Victor Hensen (1887). The terminology “plankton” is plural (singular – plankter). Plankton community is a heterogeneous group of tiny plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton) adapted to suspension in the sea and fresh water. Their intrinsic movements, if any, are so feeble that they remain essentially at the mercy of every water current. It is a potentially functional community of similar organizational rank implicit in the terms forest or grassland communities. The terminology “plankton” included all organic particles, which float freely and involuntarily in the open water independent of shore and bottom. The dependence of plankton upon water movement for maintenance and transport is accurately implied in this definition (Greek word – planktos, meaning wandering). The term plankton refers to any small biota (from microns to centimeters) living in the water and drifting at the mercy of currents, ranging from bacteria to sea jelly.