What is it about?
The traditional view of marine food webs has plant like phytoplankton and animal like microzooplankton at its base. We now realise that most of the phytoplankton and 1/3rd of the microzooplankton are "plants that eat" - they are mixotrophs. This work is one of a series that seaks to explore how this ecosystem really functions.
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Why is it important?
Because our understanding of the functioning of the base of the largest ecosystem on Earth has been misrepresenting reality, so are the models upon which predictions of climate change have beeb based.
Perspectives
Arguably about as fundamental as it can get - for decades science has been misrepresenting life at the base of marine biology. With a team of 30+ intrernational scientists we are working to redress the error. This is one of the outputs.
Professor Kevin J Flynn
Swansea University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The role of mixotrophic protists in the biological carbon pump, Biogeosciences, February 2014, Copernicus GmbH,
DOI: 10.5194/bg-11-995-2014.
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