phytoplankton
the aggregate of plants and plantlike organisms in plankton.
Origin of phytoplankton
1- Compare zooplankton.
Words Nearby phytoplankton
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use phytoplankton in a sentence
Where there’s an active, healthy whale pump, you’ll have more phytoplankton, and phytoplankton is the basis for at least half of the oxygen on the planet.
One of the big questions to emerge from the study, Cassar adds, is just how much carbon these phytoplankton may have ultimately removed from the atmosphere as they bloomed.
Australian fires in 2019–2020 had even more global reach than previously thought | Carolyn Gramling | September 15, 2021 | Science NewsAerosols from the fires also traveled eastward through the lower atmosphere, ultimately reaching the Southern Ocean where they triggered blooms of phytoplankton in its iron-starved waters.
Australian fires in 2019–2020 had even more global reach than previously thought | Carolyn Gramling | September 15, 2021 | Science NewsResearchers can then use a mathematical model to estimate the corresponding amount of phytoplankton there is.
These free-floating robots can monitor the health of our oceans | Charlotte Hu | August 18, 2021 | Popular-ScienceThey collected phytoplankton in the sea for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
How Climate Change Science Has Changed Due to COVID-19 Restrictions | Jennifer Duggan | July 14, 2021 | Time
British Dictionary definitions for phytoplankton
/ (ˌfaɪtəˈplæŋktən) /
the photosynthesizing organisms in plankton, mainly unicellular algae and cyanobacteria: Compare zooplankton
Derived forms of phytoplankton
- phytoplanktonic (ˌfaɪtəplæŋkˈtɒnɪk), adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for phytoplankton
[ fī′tō-plăngk′tən ]
Plankton consisting of free-floating algae, protists, and cyanobacteria. Phytoplankton form the beginning of the food chain for aquatic animals and fix large amounts of carbon, which would otherwise be released as carbon dioxide.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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