The biological pump, also known as the marine carbon pump, is, in its simplest form, the ocean's biologically driven sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and land runoff to the ocean interior and seafloor sediments. It is the part of the oceanic carbon cycle responsible for the cycling of organic matter formed mainly by phytoplankton during photosynthesis (soft-tissue pump), as well as the cycling of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) formed into shells by certain organisms such as plankton and mollusks (carbonate pump).
Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life—Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria—as well as viruses.
Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics or community genomics.
The iron cycle (Fe) is the biogeochemical cycle of iron through the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere. While Fe is highly abundant in the Earth's crust, it is less common in oxygenated surface waters. Iron is a key micronutrient in primary productivity, and a limiting nutrient in the Southern ocean, eastern equatorial Pacific, and the subarctic Pacific referred to as High-Nutrient, Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions of the ocean.
The Integrated Microbial Genomes system is a genome browsing and annotation platform developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-Joint Genome Institute. IMG contains all the draft and complete microbial genomes sequenced by the DOE-JGI integrated with other publicly available genomes. IMG provides users a set of tools for comparative analysis of microbial genomes along three dimensions: genes, genomes and functions. Users can select and transfer them in the comparative analysis carts based upon a variety of criteria. IMG also includes a genome annotation pipeline that integrates information from several tools, including KEGG, Pfam, InterPro, and the Gene Ontology, among others. Users can also type or upload their own gene annotations and the IMG system will allow them to generate Genbank or EMBL format files containing these annotations.
Gelatinous zooplankton are fragile animals that live in the water column in the ocean. Their delicate bodies have no hard parts and are easily damaged or destroyed. Gelatinous zooplankton are often transparent. All jellyfish are gelatinous zooplankton, but not all gelatinous zooplankton are jellyfish. The most commonly encountered organisms include ctenophores, medusae, salps, and Chaetognatha in coastal waters. However, almost all marine phyla, including Annelida, Mollusca and Arthropoda, contain gelatinous species, but many of those odd species live in the open ocean and the deep sea and are less available to the casual ocean observer. Many gelatinous plankters utilize mucous structures in order to filter feed. Gelatinous zooplankton have also been called "Gelata".
Michael John Robert Fasham, FRS was a British oceanographer and ecosystem modeller. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of open ocean plankton ecosystem models.
Rare biosphere refers to a large number of rare species of microbial life, i.e. bacteria, archaea and fungi, that can be found in very low concentrations in an environment.
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism is any microscopic living organism or virus, that is too small to see with the unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be single-celled or multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify biologically active entities such as viruses and viroids as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living.
Viral metagenomics is the study of viral genetic material sourced directly from the environment rather than from a host or natural reservoir. The goal is to ascertain the viral diversity in the environment that is often missed in studies targeting specific potential reservoirs. It reveals important information on virus evolution and the genetic diversity of the viral community without the need for isolating viral species and cultivating them in the laboratory. With the new techniques available that exploit next-generation sequencing (NGS), it is possible to study the virome of some ecosystems, even if the analysis still has some issues, in particular the lack of universal markers. Some of the first metagenomic studies of viruses were done with ocean samples, and revealed that most of the sequences of DNA and RNA viruses had no matches in databases. Subsequently, some studies about the soil virome were performed with a particular interest on bacteriophages, and it was discovered that there are almost the same number of viruses and bacteria. This approach has created improvements in molecular epidemiology and accelerated the discovery of novel viruses.
Alan Reece Longhurst is a British-born Canadian oceanographer who invented the Longhurst-Hardy Plankton Recorder, and is widely known for his contributions to the primary scientific literature, together with his numerous monographs, most notably the "Ecological Geography of the Sea". He led an effort that produced the first estimate of global primary production in the oceans using satellite imagery, and also quantified vertical carbon flux through the planktonic ecosystem via the biological pump. More recently, he has offered a number of critical reviews of several aspects of fishery management science and climate change science.
Marine biogeochemical cycles are biogeochemical cycles that occur within marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. These biogeochemical cycles are the pathways chemical substances and elements move through within the marine environment. In addition, substances and elements can be imported into or exported from the marine environment. These imports and exports can occur as exchanges with the atmosphere above, the ocean floor below, or as runoff from the land.
The Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) was an international research programme on the fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere and ocean, and within the ocean interior. Initiated by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the programme ran from 1987 through to 2003, and became one of the early core projects of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).
The viral shunt is a mechanism that prevents marine microbial particulate organic matter (POM) from migrating up trophic levels by recycling them into dissolved organic matter (DOM), which can be readily taken up by microorganisms. The DOM recycled by the viral shunt pathway is comparable to the amount generated by the other main sources of marine DOM.
William Li is a Canadian biological oceanographer. He is recognized for his research on marine picoplankton, marine macroecology, ocean surveys of plankton from measurements of flow cytometry, and detection of multi-annual ecological change in marine phytoplankton.
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.
Jellyfish blooms are substantial growths in population of species under the phyla Cnidaria and Ctenophora.
Marine viruses are defined by their habitat as viruses that are found in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Viruses are small infectious agents that can only replicate inside the living cells of a host organism, because they need the replication machinery of the host to do so. They can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Trevor Charles Platt was a British and Canadian biological oceanographer who was distinguished for his fundamental contributions to quantifying primary production by phytoplankton at various scales of space and time in the ocean.
Marine protists are defined by their habitat as protists that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Life originated as single-celled prokaryotes and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. Protists are the eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are usually single-celled and microscopic. The term protist came into use historically as a term of convenience for eukaryotes that cannot be strictly classified as plants, animals or fungi. They are not a part of modern cladistics, because they are paraphyletic.
