Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism (or microbe ) is any microscopic living organism or virus , which is invisibly small to the unaided human eye without magnification .
Pelagibacter ubique and its relatives may be the most abundant microorganisms in the ocean, and it has been claimed that they are possibly the most abundant bacteria in the world. They make up about 25% of all microbial plankton cells, and in the summer they may account for approximately half the cells present in temperate ocean surface water.
This process can be entirely abiotic or facilitated by microorganisms, especially iron-oxidizing bacteria. The abiotic processes include the rusting of iron-bearing metals, where Fe 2+ is abiotically oxidized to Fe 3+ in the presence of oxygen, and the reduction of Fe 3+ to Fe 2+ by iron-sulfide minerals.
The benefit to the bacteria, in return, is that they receive physical space to colonize at particular points in the water column typically accessible only to planktonic microbes. Perhaps the best-studied example of intimate host–microbe interactions controlling animal development is the Hawaiian bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes. [ 38 ]
Life originated as marine single-celled prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. Protists are the eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are mostly single-celled and microscopic.
Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons ...
A schematic showing the cycling of nitrogen within the ocean. The nitrogen cycle in the oceans is mediated by microorganisms, many of which are bacteria, performing multiple conversions such as: nitrogen fixation, denitrification, assimilation, and anaerobic ammonia oxidation . There are many different nitrogen metabolism strategies employed by ...
Biological oceanography is the study of how organisms affect and are affected by the physics, chemistry, and geology of the oceanographic system.Biological oceanography may also be referred to as ocean ecology, in which the root word of ecology is Oikos (oικoσ), meaning ‘house’ or ‘habitat’ in Greek.