actinian

ac·tin·i·an

(ăk-tĭn′ē-ən) also ac·tin·i·a (-ə)

n. pl. ac·tin·i·ans also ac·tin·i·ae (-ē-ē′)

A sea anemone.

[New Latin Actīnia, genus name, from Greek aktīs, aktīn-, ray; see actino-.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

actinian - any sea anemone or related animal

actiniarian, actinia

Actinaria, Actiniaria, order Actinaria, order Actiniaria - sea anemones

sea anemone, anemone - marine polyps that resemble flowers but have oral rings of tentacles; differ from corals in forming no hard skeleton

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References in periodicals archive ?

I may also mention the large number of deep-sea Holothurians (Elasipoda) which we obtained, as well as a most remarkable deep-sea Actinian, closely allied to Cerianthus, but evidently belonging to a new family of that group.

Letters and recollections of Alexander Agassiz: the 1891 Albatross expedition

167-8) lives parasitically in the stomach of this Actinian, with which it agrees in colon It is not uncommon" (Verrill, 1885).

A Century of Copepods: The U.S. Fisheries Steamer Albatross

Local populations may consist of a single clone (e.g., the actinian Haliplanella lineata; Shick, 1976; Shick and Lamb, 1977), or they may be composed of many clones and approach the genetic diversity expected for a sexually outcrossing population (see Shick, 1991, pp.

Physiological variation among clonal genotypes in the sea anemone Haliplanella lineata: growth and biochemical content