living partly but not wholly on land; living partly on land and partly in water; involving both land and water
a semiterrestrial crab/crustacean/amphibian/ecosystem
semiterrestrial in American English
(ˌsemitəˈrestriəl, ˌsemai-)
adjective
Biology
living mostly on land but requiring a moist environment or nearby water, esp. as a breeding site
Most amphibians are semiterrestrial
Word origin
[1915–20; semi- + terrestrial]This word is first recorded in the period 1915–20. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: collage, decoder, feedback, neorealism, supernationalismsemi- is a combining form borrowed from Latin, meaning “half,” freely prefixed to Englishwords of any origin, now sometimes with the senses “partially,” “incompletely,” “somewhat”.Other words that use the affix semi- include: semiautomatic, semidetached, semimonthly, semisophisticated
Examples of 'semiterrestrial' in a sentence
semiterrestrial
Several inter-specific differences have been identified, other than the production of two types of cysts in the semiterrestrial species.
Deborah BOSCHINI, Ingemar K. JÖNSSON, Tiziana ALTIERO, Roberto BERTOLANI, RobertoGUIDETTI, Lorena REBECCHI 2004, 'Experiences with dormancy in tardigrades', Journal of Limnologyhttp://www.jlimnol.it/index.php/jlimnol/article/view/276. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)