Plants are not animals and animals are not plants, right? Wrong! Tiny creatures in the ocean can be both at once!

Glibert, Patricia M., Mitra, Aditee ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5572-9331, Flynn, Kevin J., Hansen, Per Juel, Jeong, Hae Jin and Stoecker, Diane 2019. Plants are not animals and animals are not plants, right? Wrong! Tiny creatures in the ocean can be both at once! Frontiers for Young Minds 7 (48) 10.3389/frym.2019.00048

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

On land, plants make their own food by photosynthesis and animals live by eating. However, in the microscopic world in the oceans, it is not that simple. Many microscopic so-called plants (phytoplankton) can also eat like animals and many microscopic so-called animals (microzooplankton) can also photosynthesize like plants! More amazingly, some of these microzooplankton eat tiny phytoplankton and continue to live off photosynthesis from those ingested phytoplankton. These organisms acting like both plants and animals are called mixotrophs because they mix (combine) different ways of getting nutrition. These fascinating creatures are not rare freaks of nature, but are very common. Some mixotrophs are good food for fish, while others make poisons that can get into our seafood and even kill fish. Some are increasing in coastal waters due to pollution. We are learning just how important mixotrophs are to ocean ecosystems.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Publisher:	Frontiers
ISSN:	2296-6846
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 January 2022
Date of Acceptance:	4 March 2019
Last Modified:	12 May 2023 01:51
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146484

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item