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Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, [1] whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly species.
Ants like to eat and collect the honeydew made by the caterpillar. In turn, the ants will swarm over anything that might try to harm the larva. The chrysalis is usually formed in leaf litter. Many chrysalises can make faint noises. Scientists believe this noise might ward off predatory ants.
Generally, Lycaenidae species which have a myrmecophilous relationship with the ant genus Myrmica are locked to primary host specificity. The Alcon blue is unusual in this regard in that it uses different host species in different locations throughout Europe, and often uses multiple host species even within the same location and population.
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.
The world ocean covers an area of 3.618 × 10 8 km 2 with a mean depth of 3682 m, resulting in an estimated volume of 1.332 × 10 9 km 3. [17] If all of Earth's crustal surface was at the same elevation as a smooth sphere, the depth of the resulting world ocean would be about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 mi).
The ocean can be conceptualized as being divided into various zones, depending on depth, and presence or absence of sunlight. Nearly all life forms in the ocean depend on the photosynthetic activities of phytoplankton and other marine plants to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon , which is the basic building block of organic matter .
Marine larval ecology is the study of the factors influencing dispersing larvae, which many marine invertebrates and fishes have. Marine animals with a larva typically release many larvae into the water column, where the larvae develop before metamorphosing into adults.
The tiny (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, discovered in 1986, forms today an important part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean [140] and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [141]