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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 ...
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.
Further out in the open ocean, they include underwater and deep sea features such as ocean rises and seamounts. The submerged surface has mountainous features, including a globe-spanning mid-ocean ridge system, as well as undersea volcanoes , [ 19 ] oceanic trenches , submarine canyons , oceanic plateaus and abyssal plains .
Gross primary production (GPP) is the amount of chemical energy, typically expressed as carbon biomass, that primary producers create in a given length of time.Some fraction of this fixed energy is used by primary producers for cellular respiration and maintenance of existing tissues (i.e., "growth respiration" and "maintenance respiration").
The trophic level of an organism is the number of steps it is from the start of the chain. A food web starts at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, can move to herbivores at level 2, carnivores at level 3 or higher, and typically finish with apex predators at level 4 or 5. The path along the chain can form either a one-way ...
The principal marine primary producers are cyanobacteria, algae and marine plants. The oxygen released as a by-product of photosynthesis is needed by nearly all living things to carry out cellular respiration. In addition, primary producers are influential in the global carbon and water cycles. They stabilize coastal areas and can provide ...
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'.
Prochlorococcus microbes are among the major primary producers in the ocean, responsible for a large percentage of the photosynthetic production of oxygen. [1] [2] Prochlorococcus strains, called ecotypes, have physiological differences enabling them to exploit different ecological niches. [3]