Knowra Zooplankton Zooplankton Zooplankton are drifting animals and animal-like organisms in aquatic environments, ranging from single-celled protists to crustaceans and the larvae of larger animals.
Holoplankton : Organisms that remain planktonic throughout their entire life cycle. These animals, including many copepods, stay zooplankton rather than settling or swimming freely as adults.
Filter feeding : Feeding by straining suspended particles or small organisms from water. Many zooplankton capture phytoplankton and other food with setae, appendages, or mucus structures.
Plankton net : A fine-meshed net used to collect plankton from water. Researchers use nets to sample zooplankton abundance, species composition, and size structure.
Marine food web : A network of feeding relationships among organisms in the ocean. Zooplankton connect microscopic producers and microbes to fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.
Meroplankton : Organisms that are planktonic for only part of their life cycle. Many larger marine animals enter zooplankton as larvae before becoming bottom-dwellers or active swimmers.
Grazing (ecology) : Consumption of plants, algae, or microbes by animals. Zooplankton grazing can control phytoplankton abundance and alter which species dominate.
Acoustic Doppler current profiler : An instrument that uses sound scattering to measure water-current velocity through depth. Acoustic backscatter can reveal dense zooplankton layers and their vertical migration.
Carbon sequestration : The capture and long-term storage of carbon in reservoirs such as deep ocean water. Zooplankton help move carbon below the surface, though its eventual storage depends on many processes.
Microzooplankton : Small zooplankton, commonly defined as organisms roughly 20–200 micrometers across. These protists and tiny animals graze on microbes and link microbial production to larger consumers.
Trophic cascade : A chain of effects in which changes at one trophic level alter multiple lower levels. Predators of zooplankton can indirectly change phytoplankton through this food-web pathway.
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