Publication Date:
2004-07-17
Description:
The community structure and ecological function of contemporary marine ecosystems are critically dependent on eukaryotic phytoplankton. Although numerically inferior to cyanobacteria, these organisms are responsible for the majority of the flux of organic matter to higher trophic levels and the ocean interior. Photosynthetic eukaryotes evolved more than 1.5 billion years ago in the Proterozoic oceans. However, it was not until the Mesozoic Era (251 to 65 million years ago) that the three principal phytoplankton clades that would come to dominate the modern seas rose to ecological prominence. In contrast to their pioneering predecessors, the dinoflagellates, coccolithophores, and diatoms all contain plastids derived from an ancestral red alga by secondary symbiosis. Here we examine the geological, geochemical, and biological processes that contributed to the rise of these three, distantly related, phytoplankton groups.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Falkowski, Paul G -- Katz, Miriam E -- Knoll, Andrew H -- Quigg, Antonietta -- Raven, John A -- Schofield, Oscar -- Taylor, F J R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Jul 16;305(5682):354-60.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08540, USA. falko@imcs.rutgers.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256663" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Biodiversity
;
*Biological Evolution
;
*Ecosystem
;
Fossils
;
Phylogeny
;
*Phytoplankton/classification/cytology/physiology
;
Plastids/physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink