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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.
In deep sea pelagic ecosystems off of California, the trophic web is dominated by deep sea fishes, cephalopods, gelatinous zooplankton, and crustaceans. Between 1991 and 2016, 242 unique feeding relationships between 166 species of predators and prey demonstrated that gelatinous zooplankton have an ecological impact similar to that of large ...
A freshwater aquatic food web. The blue arrows show a complete food chain (algae → daphnia → gizzard shad → largemouth bass → great blue heron). A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community.
The aquatic microbial loop is a marine trophic pathway which incorporates dissolved organic carbon into the food chain.. The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton.
From shallow waters to the deep sea, the open ocean to rivers and lakes, numerous terrestrial and marine species depend on the surface ecosystem and the organisms found there. [ 28 ] The ocean's surface acts like a skin between the atmosphere above and the water below, and harbours an ecosystem unique to this environment.
While an ecosystem often has no clear boundary, as a working model it is practical to consider the functional community where the bulk of matter and energy transfer occurs. [89] Nutrient cycling occurs in ecosystems that participate in the "larger biogeochemical cycles of the earth through a system of inputs and outputs." [89]: 425
Scientists have identified several new marine species in a pristine underwater ecosystem recently discovered in international waters -- and they expect to find more. Modern technology that allows ...
They are primary producers that use solar energy as a food source. [citation needed] Detritivores and scavengers are rare in the photic zone. Microbial decomposition of dead organisms begins here and continues once the bodies sink to the aphotic zone where they form the most important source of nutrients for deep sea organisms. [5]