zooplankton
Zooplankton are the heterotrophic (or detritivorous) component of the plankton that drift in the water column of oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water. The name is derived from the Greek terms, ζῴον ("zoon") meaning "animal", and πλαγκτος ("planktos") meaning "wanderer" or "drifter"[1]. Many zooplankton are too small to be individually seen with the unaided eye.
Zooplankton is a broad categorisation spanning a range of organism sizes that includes both small protozoans and large metazoans. It includes holoplanktonic organisms whose complete life cycle lies within the plankton, and meroplanktonic organisms that spend part of their life cycle in the plankton before graduating to either the nekton or a sessile, benthic existence.
Ecologically important protozoan zooplankton groups include the foraminiferans, radiolarians and dinoflagellates (the latter are often mixotrophic). Important metazoan
zooplankton include cnidarians such as jellyfish and the
Portuguese Man o' War, crustaceans such as
copepods and krill, molluscs
such as pteropods and chordates such as salps and juvenile fish. This wide phylogenetic range includes a similarly wide range in feeding behaviour:
passive filter feeding, active predation and even
symbiosis with
Through their consumption and processing of phytoplankton (and other food sources), zooplankton play an important role in aquatic food webs, both as a resource for consumers on higher trophic levels and as a conduit for packaging the organic material in the biological pump.
References
- ^ Thurman, H. V. (1997). Introductory Oceanography. New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall College.
See also
- Bacterioplankton
- Biological pump
- Diel vertical migration
- Iron fertilization
- Ocean acidification
- Phytoplankton
- Plankton
- Primary production
External links
- Plankton*Net, images of planktonic species
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