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The pelagic food web, showing the central involvement of marine microorganisms in how the ocean imports nutrients from and then exports them back to the atmosphere and ocean floor. A marine food web is a food web of marine life. At the base of the ocean food web are single-celled algae and other plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton.
Microorganisms have key roles in carbon and nutrient cycling, animal (including human) and plant health, agriculture and the global food web. Microorganisms live in all environments on Earth that are occupied by macroscopic organisms, and they are the sole life forms in other environments, such as the deep subsurface and ‘extreme’ environments.
Winds drive ocean currents in the upper 100 meters of the ocean's surface. However, ocean currents also flow thousands of meters below the surface. These deep-ocean currents are driven by differences in the water's density, which is controlled by temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline). This process is known as thermohaline circulation.
The variability in sinking rates is due to differences in ballast, water temperature, food web structure and the types of phyto and zooplankton in different areas of the ocean. [13] If the material sinks faster, then it gets respired less by bacteria, transporting more carbon from the surface layer to the deep ocean.
[3] [4] There has been little research on mixotrophic protists, but recent studies in marine environments found mixotrophic protists contribute a significant part of the protist biomass. [5] Since protists are eukaryotes (and not prokaryotes) they possess within their cell at least one nucleus, as well as organelles such as mitochondria and ...
Pelagic food web and the biological pump. Links among the ocean's biological pump and pelagic food web and the ability to sample these components remotely from ships, satellites, and autonomous vehicles. Light blue waters are the euphotic zone, while the darker blue waters represent the twilight zone. [80]
But not always. Sometimes we get lucky—like a team did recently, when they located a fossil of a 520-million-year-old worm larva that still had its brain and guts intact. “It’s always ...
They have a seemingly simple brain, not the large complex brains of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, and had long been assumed to lack intelligence. But the cephalopod nervous system is quite different from that of other animals, and recent experiments have shown not only memory, but a changing response to the same event over time. [31] [32] [33]