Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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. It is a branch of marine biology and botany.
Amphiphytes: plants that are adapted to live either submerged or on land; Elodeids: stem plants that complete their entire lifecycle submerged, or with only their flowers above the waterline; Isoetids: rosette plants that complete their entire lifecycle submerged; Helophytes: plants rooted in the bottom, but with leaves above the waterline
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'.
Seagrasses are terrestrial plants that transitioned to the marine environment. 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.
In the ocean, they provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms, such as bivalves, fish, and baleen whales. Marine plankton include bacteria , archaea , algae , protozoa , microscopic fungi , [ 4 ] and drifting or floating animals that inhabit the saltwater of oceans and the brackish waters of estuaries .
Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons ...
Vascular plants are also represented in the ocean by groups such as the seagrasses. Unlike terrestrial ecosystems, the majority of primary production in the ocean is performed by free-living microscopic organisms called phytoplankton. It has been estimated that half of the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton.
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.