zoosphere

English

Alternative forms

• zoösphere

Etymology

From zoo- +‎ -sphere.

Noun

zoosphere (countable and uncountable, plural zoospheres)

1. The animals of the Earth, especially as an ecosystem.
   • 2017 March 6, Roger Scruton, “If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We?”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     For quite clearly, although we are animals, bound in the web of causality that joins us to the zoosphere, we are not just animals.

2. (ecology) A layer in which animals are present.
   • 1988, Wolfgang Reichardt, “Impact of the Antarctic Benthic Fauna on the Enrichment of Biopolymer Degrading Psychrophilic Bacteria”, in Microbial Ecology, volume 15, number 3, page 319:

     […] this mode of selection does not seem to apply to the zoosphere of the investigated Antarctic sediments.