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Today, algae are used by humans in many ways; for example, as fertilizers, soil conditioners, and livestock feed. [123] Aquatic and microscopic species are cultured in clear tanks or ponds and are either harvested or used to treat effluents pumped through the ponds. Algaculture on a large scale is an important type of aquaculture in some places.
Eukaryotic photoautotrophs include red algae, haptophytes, stramenopiles, cryptophytes, chlorophytes, and land plants. [6] These organisms perform photosynthesis through organelles called chloroplasts and are believed to have originated about 2 billion years ago. [1]
Algae lack the various structures that characterize plants (which evolved from freshwater green algae), such as the phyllids (leaf-like structures) and rhizoids of bryophytes (non-vascular plants), and the roots, leaves and other xylemic/phloemic organs found in tracheophytes (vascular plants). Most algae are autotrophic, although some are ...
Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) bloom on Lake Erie (United States) in 2009. These kinds of algae can cause harmful algal bloom. A harmful algal bloom (HAB), or excessive algae growth, is an algal bloom that causes negative impacts to other organisms by production of natural algae-produced toxins, water deoxygenation, mechanical damage to other organisms, or by other means.
It contains land plants (Embryophyta) and a big portion of the diversity of algae, most of which are the green algae, from which plants evolved, and the red algae. [90] A third lineage of algae, the glaucophytes (25 species), [47] contains rare and obscure species found in surfaces of freshwater and terrestrial habitats. [90]
"Seaweed" lacks a formal definition, but seaweed generally lives in the ocean and is visible to the naked eye. The term refers to both flowering plants submerged in the ocean, like eelgrass, as well as larger marine algae. Generally, it is one of several groups of multicellular algae; red, green and brown. [7]
Therefore, algae can be considered as a natural source of great interest, since they contain compounds with numerous biological activities and can be used as a functional ingredient in many technological applications to obtain functional foods. Polysaccharides in seaweed may be metabolized in humans through the action of bacterial gut enzymes ...
Mattox and Stewart 1984) – green algae (part) and land plants; Charophyta sensu lato, as used by Adl et al., is a monophyletic group which is made up of some green algae, including the stoneworts (Charophyta sensu stricto), as well as the land plants (embryophytes). Sub-divisions other than Streptophytina (below) were not given by Adl et al.