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In a reversal of the pattern on land, in the oceans, almost all photosynthesis is performed by algae and cyanobacteria, with a small fraction contributed by vascular plants and other groups. Algae encompass a diverse range of organisms, ranging from single floating cells to attached seaweeds. They include photoautotrophs from a variety of groups.
Algae is an informal term for a widespread and diverse group of photosynthetic protists which are not necessarily closely related and are thus polyphyletic. Marine algae can be divided into six groups: green , red and brown algae , euglenophytes , dinoflagellates and diatoms .
Diatoms and brown algae are examples of algae with secondary chloroplasts derived from endosymbiotic red algae, which they acquired via phagocytosis. [6] Algae exhibit a wide range of reproductive strategies, from simple asexual cell division to complex forms of sexual reproduction via spores .
The term algae encompasses many types of aquatic photosynthetic organisms, both macroscopic multicellular organisms like seaweed and microscopic unicellular organisms like cyanobacteria. Algal bloom commonly refers to the rapid growth of microscopic unicellular algae, not macroscopic algae. An example of a macroscopic algal bloom is a kelp forest.
Along with red algae [1] and cyanobacteria, they harvest light via phycobilisomes, structures consisting largely of phycobiliproteins. The green algae and land plants have lost that pigment. [11] Like red algae, and in contrast to green algae and plants, glaucophytes store fixed carbon in the cytosol. [12]
Algae is an informal term for a widespread and diverse group of photosynthetic protists which are not necessarily closely related and are thus polyphyletic. Marine algae can be divided into six groups: green, red and brown algae, euglenophytes, dinoflagellates and diatoms.
Chloroplasts probably evolved following an endosymbiotic event between an ancestral, photosynthetic cyanobacterium and an early eukaryotic phagotroph. [17] This event (termed primary endosymbiosis) is at the origin of the red and green algae (including the land plants or Embryophytes which emerged within them) and the glaucophytes, which together make up the oldest evolutionary lineages of ...
Chlamydomonas (/ ˌ k l æ m ɪ ˈ d ɒ m ə n ə s,-d ə ˈ m oʊ-/ KLAM-ih-DOM-ə-nəs, -də-MOH-) is a genus of green algae consisting of about 150 species [2] of unicellular flagellates, found in stagnant water and on damp soil, in freshwater, seawater, and even in snow as "snow algae". [3]