User:Squamelia/Plankton

Lead

 * Plankton are often overlooked in their importance either due to their generally small size or a lack of realization of their massive impact on the food web as a whole. We want to analyze the different relationships between plankton and other groups of organisms in terms of both trophic levels and primary production.

Article body
Food chain

- Fish larvae mainly eat zooplankton, which eat phytoplankton.

- add photo of food web diagram

Change section ' Importance to fish ' to 'Planktonic Relationships '

-  Whales & plankton 

- Of all animal poops, whale poop is the 'trophy', while in the ocean, phytoplankton are the powerhouse and one of their main nutrients is whale poop. In the marine food web, phytoplankton are at the bottom and are consumed by zooplankton & krill, intern being preyed upon by larger and larger marine organisms so it can be said that whale poop fuels the whole food web.

- Fish & plankton 

- It's been shown that plankton spatial patterns are present in patchy marine environments where there aren't many fish populations and additionally, their dynamics are influenced by the fish predation rate in their environment. Depending on the predation rate, they could express regular or chaotic behavior.

- A negative effect that fish larvae can have on planktonic blooms is that the larvae will prolong the blooming event by diminishing available zooplankton numbers; this in turn permits phytoplankton causing the bloom to further flourish because there's less zooplankton.

-Most of what’s already there, larval fish eating plankton after the egg yolk is used up

-Maybe add a short sentence about ichthyoplankton - some spend time as plankton before maturing

-Plankton and humans

-Humans rely on phytoplankton in that about 50% of the oxygen that we breathe was produced by phytoplankton