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The Arctic food web is complex. The loss of sea ice can ultimately affect the entire food web, from algae and plankton to fish to mammals. The impact of climate change on a particular species can ripple through a food web and affect a wide range of other organisms... Not only is the decline of sea ice impairing polar bear populations by ...
Plankton also make up the base of the marine food web, providing food for all the trophic levels above. Recent studies have analyzed the marine food web to see if the system runs on a top-down or bottom-up approach. Essentially, this research is focused on understanding whether changes in the food web are driven by nutrients at the bottom of ...
The most abundant species of coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi is an ubiquitous component of the plankton base in marine food webs. [56] Management strategies are being employed to prevent eutrophication-related coccolithophore blooms, as these blooms lead to a decrease in nutrient flow to lower levels of the ocean. [57]
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'.
A freshwater aquatic food web. The blue arrows show a complete food chain (algae → daphnia → gizzard shad → largemouth bass → great blue heron). A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community.
Within a food web, a food chain is a succession of organisms that eat other organisms and may, in turn, be eaten themselves. 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 ...
[99] [100] The dominant pelagic grazers of phytoplankton are typically associated with distinct operating modes of the food web compartments and nutrient cycling. Heterotrophic protist grazers and microzooplankton dominance is usually associated with the microbial loop and regenerated production; while mesozooplankton is associated with a ...
The microbial food web refers to the combined trophic interactions among microbes in aquatic environments. These microbes include viruses, bacteria, algae, heterotrophic protists (such as ciliates and flagellates). [1] In aquatic ecosystems, microbial food webs are essential because they form the basis for the cycling of nutrients and energy.