How to Use copepod in a Sentence

copepod

noun
  • That has pushed northward their favourite food, copepods, a kind of small crustacean.
    — The Economist, 18 July 2019
  • The copepods that live off the coast of Oregon are good sources of fat in the food web.
    — Ted Sickinger, OregonLive.com, 22 Apr. 2018
  • Precisely why a bright flash drives copepods away is unclear.
    — The Economist, 21 June 2019
  • Warm waters brought less nutrient-rich copepods, tiny crustaceans at the base of the food chain.
    — Washington Post, 17 Sep. 2017
  • Part of this is due to tiny crustaceans called copepods, a fatty food source for many of the salmon’s prey, such as herring.
    — Rocky Barker, idahostatesman, 8 July 2017
  • Life for copepods may seem simple, but their collective impact is profound.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 20 Dec. 2024
  • Meanwhile, northern copepods richer in lipids, that young steelhead eat, were less abundant.
    — Washington Post, 17 Sep. 2017
  • To continue the life cycle, they must be consumed by tiny aquatic creatures called copepods.
    — New York Times, 18 June 2018
  • Also, dogs drink loudly, lapping the water with their tongues, which is thought to scare away the infectious copepods.
    — New York Times, 18 June 2018
  • By swimming faster, the copepods swim past more fish larvae and other potential predators.
    — National Geographic, 27 Apr. 2016
  • But as the distribution of copepods, the zooplankton that are the whales’ main food source, shifted north, so too did the whales.
    — Nick Hawkins, National Geographic, 11 July 2019
  • Kevin Lafferty examines a slide of a parasitic copepod found in the gills of a horn shark.
    — Kenneth R. Weiss, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2018
  • This substance is produced by small crustaceans called copepods that often graze on dinoflagellates.
    — The Economist, 21 June 2019
  • Today, copepods have less fat, and caloric values are declining, requiring whales to eat more for the same nutritious meal.
    — Dr. Rob Moir, Boston Herald, 6 Dec. 2024
  • But fortunately, the larvae happily fed on the tiny crustaceans called copepods that the aquarists gave them.
    — Ari Daniel, NPR, 31 Mar. 2026
  • Whales eat krill and copepods bearing those isotopes, which turn up in fresh whale skin by about 6 months later, creating a record of the whales’ past travels.
    — Byscience News Staff, science.org, 2 Mar. 2023
  • All of this was a buffet for zooplankton, tiny creatures such as copepods and krill that are rich in fats and are key food sources for young fish, birds and some marine mammals.
    — Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times, 15 Sep. 2019
  • Tiny crustaceans like copepods, which are also high consumers of phytoplankton, can make good meals for forage fish, which are then eaten by fish like salmon.
    — Ted Sickinger, OregonLive.com, 22 Apr. 2018
  • Some scholars speculate that pollution and climate change are making copepods harder to find.
    — Kathryn Miles, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Take, for example, the misadventures of a zooplankton called a copepod.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 22 Mar. 2018
  • That provides a bonanza for tiny creatures called copepods, amphipods, and zooplankton that feed on sea-ice undersides.
    — National Geographic, 1 Apr. 2019
  • Among those organisms are copepods, tiny crustaceans that right whales have long fed on in the nutrient-rich waters off New England.
    — David Abel, BostonGlobe.com, 26 Feb. 2018
  • Bowheads, on the other hand, have longer, fine baleen, specifically adapted to eating copepods and unsuitable for eating fish.
    — Christian Åslund, National Geographic, 2 July 2019
  • The females are transparent, though their eyes can likely detect the male copepods and their shiny gyrations, Addadi says.
    — National Geographic, 29 Mar. 2017
  • North Pacific right whales are baleen whales, which feed by straining huge volumes of ocean water through their comb-like baleen plates that trap copepods and other zooplankton.
    — Lisa M. Krieger, The Mercury News, 27 May 2024
  • Each copepod is around 3 millimetres long, but their leaps carried them over an average distance of 80 millimetres.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 21 Mar. 2012
  • This copepod, a type of crustacean, grows on the host’s eyes and consumes corneal tissue, rendering Greenland sharks virtually blind.
    — Max Bennett, Discover Magazine, 15 Jan. 2024
  • And finally, warming oceans have forced copepods, a tiny crustacean that’s the main staple of the North Atlantic right whale’s diet, to migrate north.
    — Brian J. Skerry, National Geographic, 20 May 2020
  • The massive North Atlantic right whale’s plates have evolved to filter and collect prey less than a tenth of an inch long — tiny invertebrate crustaceans called copepods.
    — Kathryn Miles, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Nestled into extensive mats of ferns that grow high up in redwood canopies, researchers find aquatic crustaceans called copepods that normally would live in larger bodies of water.
    — Discover Magazine, 6 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'copepod.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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