Melody
Dec 29th 2008, 09:43 PM
I wonder if this tidbit will impact our enclosed marine systems at all?
The smallest of the marine phytoplankton are unicellular algae less than one-tenth the width of a hair. They grow almost exclusively by photosynthesis, or so most scientists thought.
But working aboard a research vessel in the North Atlantic, and using isotopes to track the fate of nutrients in samples of seawater, Mikhail V. Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and Glen A. Tarran of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, both in England, have determined that the tiny algae obtain about a quarter of their biomass from bacteria.
So abundant are the little algae that they alone devour between 40 percent and 95 percent of all the bacteria eaten in the top, sunlit layer of the ocean — the rest succumb to other kinds of unicellular beings. ~ Live Science (http://www.livescience.com/animals/081125-bacterial-banquet.html)
The smallest of the marine phytoplankton are unicellular algae less than one-tenth the width of a hair. They grow almost exclusively by photosynthesis, or so most scientists thought.
But working aboard a research vessel in the North Atlantic, and using isotopes to track the fate of nutrients in samples of seawater, Mikhail V. Zubkov of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and Glen A. Tarran of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, both in England, have determined that the tiny algae obtain about a quarter of their biomass from bacteria.
So abundant are the little algae that they alone devour between 40 percent and 95 percent of all the bacteria eaten in the top, sunlit layer of the ocean — the rest succumb to other kinds of unicellular beings. ~ Live Science (http://www.livescience.com/animals/081125-bacterial-banquet.html)