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The word zooplankton is derived from Ancient Greek: ζῷον, romanized: zôion, lit. 'animal'; and πλᾰγκτός, planktós, 'wanderer; drifter'. [4] Zooplankton is a categorization spanning a range of organism sizes including small protozoans and large metazoans.
Mesopelagic zooplankton have unique adaptations for the low light. Bioluminescence is a very common strategy in many zooplankton. This light production is thought to function as a form of communication between conspecifics, prey attraction, prey deterrence, and/or reproduction strategy. [8]
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
Ecologists are increasingly recognizing the important effects that cross-ecosystem transport of energy and nutrients have on plant and animal populations and communities. [ 80 ] [ 81 ] A well known example of this is how seabirds concentrate marine-derived nutrients on breeding islands in the form of feces (guano) which contains ≈15–20% ...
Part of the contents of one dip of a hand net.The image contains diverse planktonic organisms, ranging from photosynthetic cyanobacteria and diatoms to many different types of zooplankton, including both holoplankton (permanent residents of the plankton) and meroplankton (temporary residents of the plankton, e.g., fish eggs, crab larvae, worm larvae).
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 tomato greenhouse in the Netherlands. The advantage of mesocosm studies is that environmental gradients of interest (e.g., warming temperatures) can be controlled or combined to separate and understand the underlying mechanism(s) affecting the growth or survival of species, populations or communities of interest.
The ocean represents the largest continuous planetary ecosystem, hosting an enormous variety of organisms, which include microscopic biota such as unicellular eukaryotes (protists). Despite their small size, protists play key roles in marine biogeochemical cycles and harbour tremendous evolutionary diversity.