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They are the only flowering plants that live in the ocean. Seagrasses are flowering plants (angiosperms) which grow in marine environments. They evolved from terrestrial plants which migrated back into the ocean about 75 to 100 million years ago. [1] [2] In the present day they occupy the sea bottom in shallow and sheltered coastal waters ...
Marine botany is the study of flowering vascular plant species and marine algae that live in shallow seawater of the open ocean and the littoral zone, along shorelines of the intertidal zone, coastal wetlands, and low-salinity brackish water of estuaries.
Seagrass cell walls contain the same polysaccharides found in angiosperm land plants, such as cellulose [101] However, the cell walls of some seagrasses are characterised by sulfated polysaccharides, [102] [103] which is a common attribute of macroalgae from the groups of red, brown and also green algae.
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean. All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The structure of the seabed of the global ocean is governed by plate tectonics. Most of the ocean is very deep, where the seabed is known as the abyssal plain. Seafloor spreading creates ...
Benthos (from Ancient Greek βένθος (bénthos) 'the depths [of the sea]'), also known as benthon, is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream, also known as the benthic zone. [1]
A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Worldwide there is about 620,000 kilometres (390,000 mi) of coastline. Coastal habitats extend to the margins of the continental shelves, occupying about 7 percent of the ocean surface area.
Prostrate kelps lie near and along the sea floor (e.g., Laminaria). The benthic assemblage is composed of other algal species (e.g., filamentous and foliose functional groups, articulated corallines) and sessile organisms along the ocean bottom. Encrusting coralline algae directly and often extensively cover geologic substrate.
The ocean floor is not all flat but has submarine ridges and deep ocean trenches known as the hadal zone. [6] For comparison, the pelagic zone is the descriptive term for the ecological region above the benthos, including the water column up to the surface. At the other end of the spectrum, benthos of the deep ocean includes the bottom levels ...