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Jellyfish are easy to capture and digest and may be more important as food sources than was previously thought. [25] Together, phytoplankton and zooplankton make up most of the plankton in the sea. Plankton is the term applied to any small drifting organisms that float in the sea (Greek planktos = wanderer or drifter). By definition, organisms ...
The word zooplankton is derived from Ancient Greek: ζῷον, romanized: zôion, lit. 'animal'; and πλᾰγκτός, planktós, 'wanderer; drifter'. [4] Zooplankton is a categorization spanning a range of organism sizes including small protozoans and large metazoans.
Mesopelagic zooplankton have unique adaptations for the low light. Bioluminescence is a very common strategy in many zooplankton. This light production is thought to function as a form of communication between conspecifics, prey attraction, prey deterrence, and/or reproduction strategy. [8]
The amount can be less than one percent in animals consuming less digestible plants, and it can be as high as forty percent in zooplankton consuming phytoplankton. [39] Graphic representations of the biomass or productivity at each tropic level are called ecological pyramids or trophic pyramids. The transfer of energy from primary producers to ...
Vertically migrating zooplankton can also actively transport nutrients to different zones of the water column. Zooplankton feed in the surface waters at night, and then by day release fecal pellets to the midwaters, which can transport C, N, and P to the deeper waters. In the NPSG the zooplankton community is not static but fluctuates ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 24 November 2024. Organisms living in water or air that are drifters on the current or wind This article is about the marine organisms. For other uses, see Plankton (disambiguation). Marine microplankton and mesoplankton Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net. The image contains diverse planktonic ...
Biologically there is an important distinction between plankton and nekton. Plankton are the aggregate of relatively passive organisms which float or drift with the currents, such as tiny algae and bacteria, small eggs and larvae of marine organisms, and protozoa and other minute predators.
Zooplankton: Called nonconstitutive mixotrophs by Mitra et al., 2016. [40] Zooplankton that are photosynthetic: microzooplankton or metazoan zooplankton that acquire phototrophy through chloroplast retention a or maintenance of algal endosymbionts. Generalists Protists that retain chloroplasts and rarely other organelles from many algal taxa