zoo-, zoa-, zo-, -zoic, -zoid, -zoite, -zoal, -zonal, -zooid, -zoon, -zoa, -zoan +

1. Formerly, the name of an animal phylum comprising a large, diverse assortment of microscopic or near-microscopic one-celled heterotrophic organisms (protozoans).
2. Primitive forms of animal life.
3. The subkingdom which comprises all unicellular animals (by some regarded as non-cellular).

Included in the group are some which may also be classified as plants, the distinction being that these possess chlorophyll.

Destructive to, or that which kills, protozoa or protozoans.

Any of a diverse group of eukaryotes (organism composed of one or more cells, each of which contains a clearly defined nucleus enclosed by a membrane, along with organelles [small, self-contained, cellular parts that perform specific functions]), of the kingdom Protista, that are primarily unicellular, existing singly or aggregating into colonies, are usually nonphotosynthetic, and are often classified further into phyla according to their capacity for and means of motility, as by pseudopods, flagella, or cilia.

1. Of or pertaining to the Protozoa.
2. In geology, containing the remains of the earliest discovered life of the globe, which included mollusks, radiates, and protozoans.

Radiates are fibers of the articular capsule (sac enclosing a joint) that radiate from the costal cartilages to the anterior surface of the sternum.

The branch of zoology dealing with the study of protozoa or single-celled parasitic organisms with flexible membranes and the ability to move.

A unicellular or non-cellular animal organism; protozoon (singular); protozoa (plural).

A cell that has a phagocytic action on protozoa; that is, the ingestive action of phagocytes that are specialized cells that ingest and usually destroy foreign particulate matter or microorganisms.

In biology, pollinated by Protozoa or other microscopic animals, as in some aquatic plants.

This word applies to a term called malariotherapy which was used between 1917-1950 for the treatment of syphilis.

In 1917, Julius Wagner von Jauregg (Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist) began inoculating paretics (psychosis associated with neurosyphilis) with blood from patients with benign tertian malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax (protozoan parasite that causes vivax malaria). The elevated temperature of the body caused by the malaria parasite killed the temperature sensitive Treponema pallidum (a microscopic bacterial organism that causes syphilis).

Institutions for malariotherapy rapidly spread throughout Europe and the technique was also adopted in several centers in the United States. In this way, thousands of syphilitics were saved from a sure and agonizing death.

Of or belonging to the geological period of living creatures having souls or minds; that is, the human period.

1. A slender outgrowth on mosses, liverworts, and the reproductive cells of ferns that absorbs nourishment in much the same way as a root.
2. Any of various slender filaments that function as roots in mosses, ferns, fungi, etc.

1. Applied to animals living on dead or decaying matter.
2. Of or relating to a saprozoite.
3. Designating the type of nutrition employed by a saprozoite.

Describing an organism that feeds on organic material in solution, rather than on solid organic material.

1. An animal that lives on dead or decaying organic matter; a saprozoic organism.
2. An animal; such as, a protozoan, that absorbs nutrients from dead or decaying organic matter; an animal saprotroph.
3. A reference to an animal feeding on decaying plant or animal matter in the form of dissolved organic compounds.

An animal disease that requires both a vertebrate host and a nonanimal (food, soil, plant) reservoir or developmental site for completion of its life cycle.

Examples include:

• Botulism, a paralytic, often fatal illness, caused by ingestion of food contaminated with a preformed toxin.
• Coccidioidomycosis, an infection which is limited to the lungs and caused by inhalation of spores.
• Ascariasis, infestation of the gastrointestinal tract that may produce diarrhea and anorexia.
• Tungiasis, a disease caused by the chigoe flea, the female of which penetrates the human skin, often under the toenail, where she becomes greatly distended with eggs, causing a painful ulcer and inflammation.

A stage in the life cycle of certain sporozoan protozoa resulting from merogony (the development of a portion of an ovum).