An international team of oceanologists, chemists and microbiologists has announced the discovery of several new viruses that infect plankton in all of the world's oceans. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the ...
A previously overlooked factor—the position of continents—helps fill Earth's oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing most deep ocean creatures.
Earth Sciences
Aug 17, 2022
2
641
An international team of scientists from UCL (University College London), the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Natural History Museum (London) and the University of Florence have found a remarkable type of fossilization ...
Evolution
May 19, 2022
1
152
Stand on the ocean's shore and take a big whiff of the salt spray and you'll smell the unmistakably pungent scent of the sea. That ripe, almost rotting smell? That's sulfur.
Earth Sciences
Oct 11, 2021
2
540
As the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean, and the surrounding Arctic land warm rapidly, scientists are racing to understand the warming's effects on Arctic ecosystems. With shrinking sea ice, more light reaches the surface of ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 16, 2021
43
408
Ocean plankton are the drifters of the marine world. They include algae, animals, bacteria, and protists that are at the mercy of the tide and currents. Many are microscopic, though others, like jellyfish, can grow to relatively ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 15, 2020
0
169
A neural network-driven Earth system model has led University of California, Irvine oceanographers to a surprising conclusion: phytoplankton populations will grow in low-latitude waters by the end of the 21st century.
Earth Sciences
Jan 27, 2020
8
935
A single-celled marine plankton evolved a miniature version of a multi-cellular eye, possibly to help see its prey better, according to University of British Columbia (UBC) research published today in Nature.
Evolution
Jul 1, 2015
16
3760
Rising global temperatures could increase the amount of carbon dioxide naturally released by the world's oceans, fuelling further climate change, a study suggests.
Earth Sciences
Jun 8, 2014
54
0
After studying what likely occurred in the aftermath of Earth being struck by the Chicxulub asteroid, a team of researchers in the U.S. has found evidence to suggest organisms in freshwater lakes and streams fared far better ...
Plankton (singular plankter) are any drifting organisms (animals, plants, archaea, or bacteria) that inhabit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bodies of fresh water. That is, plankton are defined by their ecological niche rather than phylogenetic or taxonomic classification. They provide a crucial source of food to larger, more familiar aquatic organisms such as fish and whales.
Though many planktic (or planktonic—see section on Terminology) species are microscopic in size, plankton includes organisms covering a wide range of sizes, including large organisms such as jellyfish.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
