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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 February 2025. 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 ...
Holoplankton can be contrasted with meroplankton, which are planktic organisms that spend part of their life cycle in the benthic zone. Examples of holoplankton include some diatoms , radiolarians , some dinoflagellates , foraminifera , amphipods , krill , copepods , and salps , as well as some gastropod mollusk species.
Plankton comes in all sizes and shapes, from microscopic to several inches. Some larger jellyfish are considered planktonic. Plankton are the building blocks of life in the sea.
The study of the dispersion of these particles is called aerobiology. Aeroplankton is made up mostly of microorganisms , including viruses , about 1,000 different species of bacteria , around 40,000 varieties of fungi , and hundreds of species of protists , algae , mosses , and liverworts that live some part of their life cycle as aeroplankton ...
A planktivore is an aquatic organism that feeds on planktonic food, including zooplankton and phytoplankton. [1] [2] Planktivorous organisms encompass a range of some of the planet's smallest to largest multicellular animals in both the present day and in the past billion years; basking sharks and copepods are just two examples of giant and microscopic organisms that feed upon plankton.
However, there is a simpler scheme that categorizes plankton based on a logarithmic size scale: Macroplankton (200–2000 μm) Micro-plankton (20–200 μm) Nanoplankton (2–20 μm) This was even further expanded to include picoplankton (0.2–2 μm) and fem-toplankton (0.02–0.2 μm), as well as net plankton, ultraplankton.
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Body size has been defined as a "master trait" for plankton as it is a morphological characteristic shared by organisms across taxonomy that characterises the functions performed by organisms in ecosystems. [9] [10] It has a paramount effect on growth, reproduction, feeding strategies and mortality. [11]