epibenthos

Epibenthos - invertebrates that live on top of the seabed.

It appears to be an opportunistic feeder, mostly taking epibenthos and small fish.

Epibenthos lives on top of the sediments, i.e., like a sea cucumber or a sea snail crawling about.

Macrostomidans are members of a large range of aquatic faunas, ranging from the meiobenthos, epibenthos, to plankton.

Others fed mostly on epifauna (invertebrates on top of the seafloor surface, also called epibenthos), or alternatively on infauna (invertebrates that burrow into the seafloor substrate).

Epifauna, also called epibenthos, are aquatic animals that live on the bottom substratum as opposed to within it, that is, the benthic fauna that live on top of the sediment surface at the seafloor.

These result from the adaptation of sand dollars, in the course of their evolution, from creatures that originally lived their lives on top of the seabed (epibenthos) to creatures that burrow beneath it (endobenthos).