Publication Date:
2021-07-09
Description:
Protozoa feed on and regulate the abundance of most types of aquatic microorganisms, and they are an integral part of all aquatic microbial food webs. Being so small, aerobic protozoa thrive at low oxygen tensions, where they feed (largely unaffected by metazoan grazing) on the abundance of other microorganisms. In anaerobic environments, they are the only phagotrophic organisms, and they live in unique symbiotic consortia with methanogens, sulphate reducers and non-sulphur purple bacteria. The number of extant species of protozoa may be quite modest (the global number of ciliate species is estimated at 3000), and most of them probably have cosmopolitan distributions. This will undoubtedly make it easier to carry out further tasks, e.g. understanding the role of protozoan species diversity in the natural environment.
Keywords:
Ecology
;
Limnology
;
Oxygen depletion
;
Distribution
;
Species diversity
;
Inland water environment
;
Freshwater ecology
;
Food webs
;
Filter feeders
;
Metabolism
;
Protists
Repository Name:
AquaDocs
Type:
book_section
,
FALSE
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
113-125
