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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.
Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net.The image contains diverse planktonic organisms, ranging from photosynthetic cyanobacteria and diatoms to many different types of zooplankton, including both holoplankton (permanent residents of the plankton) and meroplankton (temporary residents of the plankton, e.g., fish eggs, crab larvae, worm larvae).
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'.
Marine life, sea life, or ocean life is the plants, animals, and other organisms that live in the salt water of seas or oceans, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life affects the nature of the planet. Marine organisms, mostly microorganisms, produce oxygen and sequester carbon.
The bright colors of Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, are produced by thermophiles, a type of extremophile.. An extremophile (from Latin extremus 'extreme' and Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) 'love') is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e., environments with conditions approaching or stretching the limits of what known ...
It has a polymorphic life cycle, ranging from free-living cells to large colonies. [54] It has the ability to form floating colonies, where hundreds of cells are embedded in a gel matrix, which can increase massively in size during blooms. [55] As a result, Phaeocystis is an important contributor to the marine carbon [56] and sulfur cycles. [57 ...
The three primary zones of a lake. A lake ecosystem or lacustrine ecosystem includes biotic (living) plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (non-living) physical and chemical interactions. [1] Lake ecosystems are a prime example of lentic ecosystems (lentic refers to stationary or relatively still freshwater, from the Latin ...
An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms — aquatic life —that are dependent on each other and on their environment. The two main types of aquatic ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. [1]