Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use plankton in a sentence

17 example sentences · noun

Plankton means organisms, especially small and microscopic ones, that drift in water. Example: “Whales feed on tiny plankton drifting in the ocean.”

Examples of plankton by meaning

nounOrganisms, especially small and microscopic ones, that drift in water.

  • Whales feed on tiny plankton drifting in the ocean.
  • The lake water was full of microscopic plankton.
  • The study focused on the role of plankton in the food chain.

More sentences with plankton

  • Aeroplankton are the atmospheric equivalent of oceanic plankton.From the entry aeroplankton
  • My students have worked in communities of freshwater plankton, marine fishes and intertidal algae and invertebrates.2026 January 30 (last accessed), Jonathan Shurin, UC San Diego School of Biological Sciences, archived from the original on 30 Jan 2026. From the entry mesocosm
  • Wakasagi are pelagic plankton feeders found in open lakes, streams and reservoirs.2021, “California fish species”, in University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. From the entry wakasagi
  • Choanoflagellates are plankton: tiny protozoans that feed on even tinier bacteria.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 30. From the entry choanoflagellate
  • It is a harmless plankton eater, and its name, whale shark has been confusing people for years.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 42. From the entry whale shark
  • Like the whale shark, the basking shark is a huge, slow-moving plankton feeder.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 89. From the entry basking shark
  • Radiolaria, which are single-celled plankton, are abundant in all regions of the world ocean and older than multicellular life.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Granta Books, published 2013, page 137. From the entry radiolaria
  • The largest rays, like the largest sharks, are plankton strainers.2002, F. Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis, John B. Heiser, Vertebrate Life, 6th edition, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, →ISBN…. From the entry devilfish
  • One of them, its belly gorged probably with a few trillion plankton, seemed to be lying asleep on the surface.1934, Alan Villiers, Whalers of the Midnight Sun: […], New York, N.Y.; London: Charles Scribner's Sons, page 154. From the entry a
  • Results indicated the FPV-covered ponds exhibited lower mean values in biochemical oxygen demand and plankton biomass but higher oxidation–reduction potential relative to the control ponds.2021 November 16, Teng-Wei Wang et al., “Effects of floating photovoltaic systems on water quality of aquaculture ponds”, in Aquaculture…. From the entry Chupei
  • Using a multi-seasonal, low trophic state mesocosm experiment, we investigated how higher water temperature and brownification affect plankton community composition, phenology, and functioning.2015 October 14, “Increasing Water Temperature Triggers Dominance of Small Freshwater Plankton”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry brownification
  • John stood near a large circular seawater tank containing a school of "borks" (Pagothenia borchgrevinki), silvery, foot-long, trout-shaped Antarctic fish that feed on plankton.2012, James McClintock, “Life Adrift: The Small Organisms Matter”, in Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry bork
  • The basis of cenology is the sampling survey, of which the plankton programme of the International Indian Ocean Expedition is a fairly typical example.1973, Special Publication Dedicated to N. K. Panikkar, page 180. From the entry cenology
  • Additional experiments to determine the value of different organisms in plankton as food for larvae are needed for an understanding of the relationship between food and reproduction.1966, Alfred Clarence Redfield, Carl Richard Moore, Frank Rattray Lillie, The Biological Bulletin, Volume 130, Marine Biological…. From the entry preadult

Meaning of plankton

  1. noun Organisms, especially small and microscopic ones, that drift in water.
  2. noun A plankter, any single organism that drifts in water.

Full definition of plankton

Questions about plankton in a sentence

How do you use plankton in a sentence?
Plankton is used as a noun. For example: “Whales feed on tiny plankton drifting in the ocean.”
What is a short sentence with plankton?
“Aeroplankton are the atmospheric equivalent of oceanic plankton.”
What does plankton mean?
Plankton means organisms, especially small and microscopic ones, that drift in water.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plankton (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use plankton in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/plankton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.