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Marine Plankton
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that drift in water (or air) but are unable to actively propel themselves against currents (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms, such as bivalves, fish, and baleen whales. Marine plankton include bacteria, archaea, algae, protozoa, microscopic fungi, and drifting or floating animals that inhabit the saltwater of oceans and the brackish waters of estuaries. Freshwater plankton are similar to marine plankton, but are found in lakes and rivers. Mostly, plankton just drift where currents take them, though some, like jellyfish, swim slowly but not fast enough to generally overcome the influence of currents. Although plankton are usually thought of as inhabiting water, there are also airborne versions that live part of their lives drifting in the atmosphere. These ''aeroplankton'' include plant spor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marine Microplankton
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine habitat, marine environment, that is, in the saline water, saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism (or microbe) is any microscopic scale, microscopic life, living organism or virus, which is invisibly small to the naked eye, unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be unicellular organism, single-celled or multicellular organism, multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses, and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic scale, macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile (organism), juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify viruses as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living. Marine microorganisms have been variously estimated to make up about 70%, or about 90%, Modified text was copied from th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brackish
Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from the Middle Dutch root '' brak''. Certain human activities can produce brackish water, in particular civil engineering projects such as dikes and the flooding of coastal marshland to produce brackish water pools for freshwater prawn farming. Brackish water is also the primary waste product of the salinity gradient power process. Because brackish water is hostile to the growth of most terrestrial plant species, without appropriate management it can be damaging to the environment (see article on shrimp farms). Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre—more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (‰), which is a spec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motility
Motility is the ability of an organism to move independently using metabolism, metabolic energy. This biological concept encompasses movement at various levels, from whole organisms to cells and subcellular components. Motility is observed in animals, microorganisms, and even some plant structures, playing crucial roles in activities such as foraging, reproduction, and cellular functions. It is genetically determined but can be influenced by environmental factors. In multicellular organisms, motility is facilitated by systems like the Nervous system, nervous and Human musculoskeletal system, musculoskeletal systems, while at the cellular level, it involves mechanisms such as amoeboid movement and flagellar propulsion. These cellular movements can be directed by external stimuli, a phenomenon known as taxis. Examples include chemotaxis (movement along chemical gradients) and phototaxis (movement in response to light). Motility also includes physiological processes like gastroi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecological Niche
In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. Three variants of ecological niche are described by It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of Resource (biology), resources and competitors (for example, by growing when resources are abundant, and when predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce) and how it in turn alters those same factors (for example, limiting access to resources by other organisms, acting as a food source for predators and a consumer of prey). "The type and number of variables comprising the dimensions of an environmental niche vary from one species to another [and] the relative importance of particular environmental variables for a species may vary according to the geographic and biotic contexts". See also Chapter 2: Concepts of niches, pp. 7 ''ff'' A Grinnellian niche is determined by the habitat in which a species lives and its accompanying Behavioral ecology, behavioral adaptations. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institut Océanographique
The () is an ocean education organization based in Monaco. The institute manages two ocean museums (in Monaco and Paris) and lobbies globally for the preservation of the oceans' ecology. History The Institut océanographique was founded in 1906 by Albert I, Prince of MonacoSciences ''Monaco-consulate.com'' (the was launched in Monaco in 1921). In 1957, was appointed director of the Institut océanographique. In 1961, the Institut océanographique reached an agreement with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microscopic Scale
The microscopic scale () is the scale of objects and events smaller than those that can easily be seen by the naked eye, requiring a lens (optics), lens or microscope to see them clearly. In physics, the microscopic scale is sometimes regarded as the scale between the macroscopic scale and the quantum scale. Microscopic units and measurements are used to classify and describe very small objects. One common microscopic length scale unit is the micrometre (also called a ''micron'') (symbol: μm), which is one millionth of a metre. History Whilst compound microscopes were first developed in the 1590s, the significance of the microscopic scale was only truly established in the 1600s when Marcello Malpighi, Marcello Malphigi and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek microscopically observed frog lungs and microorganisms. As microbiology was established, the significance of making scientific observations at a microscopic level increased. Published in 1665, Robert Hooke's book Micrographia details h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, palaeontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. About 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomen". The first part of a binomen is the name of a genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name (zoology), specific name or the specific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Spray
Sea spray consists of aerosol particles formed from the ocean, primarily by ejection into Earth's atmosphere through bursting bubbles at the air-sea interface Sea spray contains both organic matter and inorganic salts that form sea salt aerosol (SSA). SSA has the ability to form cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and remove anthropogenic aerosol pollutants from the atmosphere. Coarse sea spray has also been found to inhibit the development of lightning in storm clouds. Sea spray is directly (and indirectly, through SSA) responsible for a significant degree of the heat and moisture fluxes between the atmosphere and the ocean, affecting global climate patterns and tropical storm intensity. Sea spray also influences plant growth and species distribution in coastal ecosystems and increases corrosion of building materials in coastal areas. Generation Formation When wind, whitecaps, and breaking waves mix air into the sea surface, the air regroups to form bubbles, floats to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seed
In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after the embryo sac is fertilization, fertilized by Pollen, sperm from pollen, forming a zygote. The embryo within a seed develops from the zygote and grows within the mother plant to a certain size before growth is halted. The formation of the seed is the defining part of the process of reproduction in seed plants (spermatophytes). Other plants such as ferns, mosses and marchantiophyta, liverworts, do not have seeds and use water-dependent means to propagate themselves. Seed plants now dominate biological Ecological niche, niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates. In the flowering plants, the ovary ripens into a fruit which contains the seed and serves to disseminate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by most types of flowers of seed plants for the purpose of sexual reproduction. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced Gametophyte#Heterospory, microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male Conifer cone, cone to the female cone of gymnosperms. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it Germination, germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and Forensic science, forensics. Pollen in plants is used for transferring Ploidy#Haploid and monoploid, haploid male genetic ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Spore
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual (in fungi) or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa. They were thought to have appeared as early as the mid-late Ordovician period as an adaptation of early land plants. Bacterial spores are not part of a sexual cycle, but are resistant structures used for survival under unfavourable conditions. Myxozoan spores release amoeboid infectious germs ("amoebulae") into their hosts for parasitic infection, but also reproduce within the hosts through the pairing of two nuclei within the plasmodium, which develops from the amoebula. In plants, spores are usually haploid and unicellular and are produced by meiosis in the sporangium of a diploid sporophyte. In some rare cases, a diploid spore is also produced in some algae, or fungi. Under favourable conditions, the spore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeroplankton
Aeroplankton (or aerial plankton) are tiny lifeforms that float and drift in the air, carried by wind. Most of the living things that make up aeroplankton are very small to Microscope, microscopic in size, and many can be difficult to identify because of their tiny size. Scientists collect them for study in traps and sweep nets from aircraft, kites or balloons. The study of the dispersion of these particles is called aerobiology. Aeroplankton is made up mostly of microorganisms, including viruses, about 1,000 different species of bacteria, around 40,000 varieties of Fungus, fungi, and hundreds of species of protists, algae, mosses, and Marchantiophyta, liverworts that live some part of their life cycle as aeroplankton, often as spores, pollen, and wind-scattered seeds. Additionally, microorganisms are swept into the air from terrestrial dust storms, and an even larger amount of airborne marine microorganisms are propelled high into the atmosphere in sea spray. Aeroplankton depo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
