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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 February 2025. Organisms living in water or air that are drifters on the current or wind This article is about the marine organisms. For other uses, see Plankton (disambiguation). Marine microplankton and mesoplankton Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net. The image contains diverse planktonic ...
Phytoplankton (/ ˌ f aɪ t oʊ ˈ p l æ ŋ k t ə n /) are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words φυτόν ( phyton ), meaning ' plant ', and πλαγκτός ( planktos ), meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'.
Biologically there is an important distinction between plankton and nekton. Plankton are the aggregate of relatively passive organisms which float or drift with the currents, such as tiny algae and bacteria, small eggs and larvae of marine organisms, and protozoa and other minute predators.
Phytoplankton; Zooplankton; However, there is a simpler scheme that categorizes plankton based on a logarithmic size scale: Macroplankton (200–2000 μm) Micro-plankton (20–200 μm) Nanoplankton (2–20 μm) This was even further expanded to include picoplankton (0.2–2 μm) and fem-toplankton (0.02–0.2 μm), as well as net plankton ...
Mycoplankton are often found in higher abundances near the surface, as well as in shallow waters. This is indicative of a connection between mycoplankton and the upwelling of organic matter. Phytoplankton communities are also abundant in the euphotic zone, which provides further evidence for the role of Mycoplankton in consumption of organic ...
Planktology is the study of plankton, various small drifting plants, animals and microorganisms that inhabit bodies of water. Planktology topics include primary production, energy flow and the carbon cycle. Plankton drive the "biological pump", a process by which the ocean ecosystem transports carbon from the surface euphotic zone to
The aquatic microbial loop is a marine trophic pathway which incorporates dissolved organic carbon into the food chain.. The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton.
Ocean chlorophyll concentration as a proxy for marine primary production. Green indicates where there are a lot of phytoplankton, while blue indicates where there are few phytoplankton. – NASA Earth Observatory 2019. [1] Marine primary production is the chemical synthesis in the ocean of organic compounds from atmospheric or dissolved carbon ...