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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.
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 sea surface microlayer (SML) at the air-sea interface is a distinct, under-studied habitat compared to the subsurface and copepods, important components of ocean food webs, have developed key adaptations to exploit this niche. [40] The ocean-spanning SML forms the boundary between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere.
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.
The diagram on the right shows links among the ocean's biological pump and the pelagic food web and the ability to sample these components remotely from ships, satellites, and autonomous vehicles. Light blue waters are the euphotic zone , while the darker blue waters represent the twilight zone .
These webs are vital to the stability and production of ecosystems in a variety of aquatic environments, including lakes, rivers, and oceans. By converting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and other nutrients into biomass that larger organisms may eat, microbial food webs maintain higher trophic levels.
Marine life can be roughly grouped into autotrophs and heterotrophs according to their roles within the food web: the former include photosynthetic and the much rarer chemosynthetic organisms (chemoautotrophs) that can convert inorganic molecules into organic compounds using energy from sunlight or exothermic oxidation, such as cyanobacteria ...
Marine microorganisms also recycle nutrients for use in the marine food web and in the process release CO 2 to the atmosphere. Microbial biomass and other organic matter (remnants of plants and animals) are converted to fossil fuels over millions of years.