[Ads-l] sympagic (sea ice habitat)

[Ben Zimmer]

"Sympagic (habitat)" has a Wikipedia page but no entry in the OED or any
other major dictionary.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympagic_ecology
A sympagic environment is one where water exists mostly as a solid, ice,
such as a polar ice cap or glacier. Solid sea ice is permeated with
channels filled with salty brine. These briny channels and the sea ice
itself have its ecology, referred to as "sympagic ecology".
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http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/03/life-sea-ice
Julia Whitty, "Life in the Sea Ice," Mother Jones, Mar. 1, 2011
Amazingly, brine inclusions support tiny but rich ecosystems of bacteria,
viruses, unicellular algae, diatom chains, worms, and crustaceans—a
near-frozen ecosystem inside a frozen world known as a sympagic environment
(Greek syn: with; pagos: frost).
---

Scholarly literature suggests the word first appeared in this 1977 article:

Terence M. Whitaker (1977), "Sea Ice Habitats of Signy Island (South
Orkneys) and Their Primary Productivity," In: George Albert Llano (ed.),
Adaptations within Antarctic Ecosystems, Proceedings of the Third SCAR
Symposium on Antarctic Biology. Smithsonian Instituhon, Washington, D.C.,
pp. 75-89.
https://books.google.com/books?id=ykURAAAAYAAJ

Google Books only has it in snippet view, but it's possible to find several
cites for "sympagic", e.g., "Table 1: An indication of the variety of
sympagic habitats present in winter at the South Orkney Islands."

--bgz

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