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Most of the well-recognized phototrophs are autotrophic, also known as photoautotrophs, and can fix carbon. They can be contrasted with chemotrophs that obtain their energy by the oxidation of electron donors in their environments. Photoautotrophs are capable of synthesizing their own food from inorganic substances using light as an energy source.
Photoautotrophs are organisms that can utilize light energy from sunlight and elements (such as carbon) from inorganic compounds to produce organic materials needed to sustain their own metabolism (i.e. autotrophy).
Finally, there are nekton (animals that can propel themselves, like fish, squids, and crabs), which are the largest and the most obvious animals in the photic zone, but their quantity is the smallest among all the groups. [4] Phytoplankton are microscopic plants living suspended in the water column that have little or no means of motility.
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 ...
Many animals feed on kelp and kelp provides sheltered habitats for yet others. Sea grass is the only type of flowering plant that grows in British seas, but it nonetheless forms vast beds. Invertebrates in coastal Britain are very diverse and include brittle stars , hermit crabs , mussels , prawns , sponges , sea anemones and sea squirts .
[4]: 1242 Marine primary producers are important because they underpin almost all marine animal life by generating most of the oxygen and food that provide other organisms with the chemical energy they need to exist. The principal marine primary producers are cyanobacteria, algae and marine plants.
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms that inhabit the sea.Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
These include photoautotrophs (which use sunlight) and lithoautotrophs (which use inorganic oxidation). Heterotrophs, such as animals and fungi, are not capable of carbon fixation but are able to grow by consuming the carbon fixed by autotrophs or other heterotrophs. Seven natural autotrophic carbon fixation pathways are currently known.