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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.
This diversity results in complex food webs, with large predator fish eating smaller forage fish that eat yet smaller zooplankton and so on. However, all food webs eventually depend on plants, which are the primary producers. Coral reefs typically produce 5–10 grams of carbon per square meter per day (gC·m −2 ·day −1) biomass. [101] [102]
Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net.The image contains diverse planktonic organisms, ranging from photosynthetic cyanobacteria and diatoms to many different types of zooplankton, including both holoplankton (permanent residents of the plankton) and meroplankton (temporary residents of the plankton, e.g., fish eggs, crab larvae, worm larvae).
Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons ...
Life histories connect disparate ecosystems; species that live at the surface during one life history stage may occupy the deep sea, benthos, reefs, or freshwater ecosystems during another. A diversity of fish species utilize the ocean's surface, [119] either as adults or as nursery habitat for eggs and young. In contrast, species floating on ...
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea.Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
Ocean water presents many vastly different habitats based on temperature and nutrient availability, resulting in phytogeographic zones, regions, and provinces. [ 84 ] To some degree, the distribution of algae is subject to floristic discontinuities caused by geographical features, such as Antarctica , long distances of ocean or general land masses.
Zooplankton sample including several species of copepods (1–5), gastropod larva (6) doliolids (7), fish eggs (8), and decapod larva (9) (Photo by Iole Di Capua). Zooplankton are the heterotrophic component of the planktonic community (the "zoo-" prefix comes from Ancient Greek: ζῷον, romanized: zôion, lit.