Talk:Prochlorococcus

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Raaghul1698, Sophiakim56.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:15, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Atmospheric oxygen
I think the statement that Prochlorococcus is responsible for at least 50% of atmospheric oxygen is dubious. What does that mean? That it created half of the oxygen in the atmosphere back when the atmosphere got its oxygen? It may be true that it produces half of the oxygen that is presently being produced by plants and algae, but that's not the same thing. (By the way, if all the Prochlorococcus died, we'd still have our oxygen, and it wouldn't go down much at all. When Prochlorococcus dies or gets eaten, this consumes the oxygen that it produced during its life.) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:53, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Eric Kvaalen. According to Field et al (1998) approximately 50% of global net primary production (and therefore oxygen production) is attributed to oceanic production and phytoplankton, which is in turn divided among all phytoplankton groups, not just Prochlorococcus. I've heard estimates that Prochlorococcus is responsible for about 50% of marine primary production, but I don't have a legitimate source for that right now, and it would probably be disputed anyways. In any case, the statement that Prochlorococcus is responsible for 50% of global oxygen production is incorrect and should be deleted. Alimardo (talk) 19:32, 18 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi! I'm a bit late to the game on this, but I'm a PhD student that has been tasked with editing this article for my Microbial Ecology course. Can anyone make any suggestions for places you know this article could use some work? I've found a few more updated articles, as I see this hasn't been edited since 2017. I may be able to help with the portion about atmospheric oxygen, but I agree with the rhetoric that it isn't 100% accurate. Prochlorococcus could be considered a contributor to atmospheric oxygen, but it's not the main player. Please let me know! Any suggestions are good ones. --Cbdull (talk) 23:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Prochlorococcus. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20041211182136/http://web.mit.edu:80/mbsulli/www/Rocap-etal-2003.pdf to http://web.mit.edu/mbsulli/www/Rocap-etal-2003.pdf

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 19:11, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Image available
https://www.flickr.com/photos/prochlorococcus/33750887441/ is CC0. 66.30.115.60 (talk) 14:08, 30 June 2017 (UTC)