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Marine invertebrates are invertebrate animals that live in marine habitats, and make up most of the macroscopic life in the oceans. It is a polyphyletic blanket term that contains all marine animals except the marine vertebrates , including the non- vertebrate members of the phylum Chordata such as lancelets , sea squirts and salps .
The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. [1] Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and diversity of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. [2] Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 10 μm (0.0004 in) [3] myxozoans to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. [4]
These invertebrates are ubiquitous to freshwater ecosystems around the world and are present in both lotic and lentic ecosystems, often living among the rocks and sediment. Aquatic macroinvertebrates include insects, bivalves, gastropods, annelids, and crustaceans.
Anthozoa is a class of marine invertebrates which includes sessile cnidarians such as the sea anemones, stony corals, soft corals and sea pens.Adult anthozoans are almost all attached to the seabed, while their larvae can disperse as planktons.
Annelids are members of the protostomes, one of the two major superphyla of bilaterian animals – the other is the deuterostomes, which includes vertebrates. [68] Within the protostomes, annelids used to be grouped with arthropods under the super-group Articulata ("jointed animals"), as segmentation is obvious in most members of both phyla ...
Pacific sea nettles, Chrysaora fuscescens. Cnidaria (/ n ɪ ˈ d ɛər i ə, n aɪ-/ nih-DAIR-ee-ə, NY-) [4] is a phylum under kingdom Animalia containing over 11,000 species [5] of aquatic invertebrates found both in fresh water and marine environments (predominantly the latter), including jellyfish, hydroids, sea anemones, corals and some of the smallest marine parasites.
Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are a part of the subphylum Crustacea (/ k r ə ˈ s t eɪ ʃ ə /), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthropods including decapods (shrimps, prawns, crabs, lobsters and crayfish), seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods ...
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.