CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE Chapter 14: Plankton, Algae, and Plants In this chapter o!

learned that organisms that drift in the ocean are known collectively as plankton. Bacteria and cyanobacteria, along with larger single-celled plantlike organisms like diatoms and dinoflagellates, are collectively called phytoplankton and are responsible for most of the oceans primary productivity. (The larger marine producers we call seaweeds, and relatively simple organisms that depend on chemosynthesis account for most of the rest.) hytoplankton!and "ooplankton, the small, drifting or weakly swimming animals that consume them!are the first links in most oceanic food webs. lankton are most common along the coasts, in the upper sunlit layers of the temperate "one, in areas of e#uatorial upwelling, and in the southern sub-polar ocean. lanktonic cyanobacteria are often present in astonishingly high numbers, especially in areas such as the tropics that lack ade#uate nutrients for the larger phytoplankters. $any physical and biological factors influence marine primary productivity, the most important being the availability of light and inorganic nutrients. %orldwide oceanic productivity almost certainly e&ceeds land productivity, but a much smaller mass of producers is responsible for productivity in the ocean than on land!marine producers are considerably more efficient in assembling glucose molecules. The larger producers informally known as seaweeds are classified by color (that is, pigment composition) into three large groups' green, brown, and red algae. (ome forms of brown algae, which we call kelp, grow in great underwater forests. )ote that not all large marine autotrophs are algae* some are plants!sea grasses and mangroves. In the ne"t chapter o! #ill learn more about the world of marine heterotrophs!animals. +reed from the need to make their own food, animals have evolved astonishing adaptations for gra"ing, predation, and parasitism.