Welcome back. Hopefully everything's
going well and you enjoyed the first half of the course, and you found success on
the midterm and all of your labs are up to date. We're gonna move on and look at Bacteria, Protists and Plants. We're going to focus
on our local ecosystem and kind of go through each group. To study. The picture here is of a substantial red tide... dinoflagellates as you may recall. They belong to a group of
algae, clade, you know the formal taxonomy is Dinophyta...
but we also
call them Pyrrophyta or fire algae, because they have that
reddish tint to them. The small, marine snow, is just
organics that settle down through the ocean to the bottom. Detritus.
It basically fuels bottom ecology. So this, marine snow,
is anything that sinks that can be used as food. The microbes that we'll be looking at: viruses, the prokaryotic microbes: archaea & bacteria, the eukaryotic microbes:
protozoans and algae (and then fungi)... those are the
classes of the the different organis
ms that will be running through. In this lecture, the viruses are not considered living by most
biologists. Some scientists, like in oceanography (class), classify them as
the smallest living things...so you get a little mixed message. I would think that this is the marine biology we won't
consider them independent living organisms. But they're parasites of living cells and they invade a cell and take it over
basically. Archaea. Archaea bacteria, a picture of a
sinkhole above. Remember... their
life processes produce acids
and this acid (this weak acid)...water dissolves limestone. So our sinkholes here in Florida, called karst topography, Our soil bacteria, the Archaea, help make sinkholes. So... This karst topography is a limestone topography that
dissolves in slightly acidic water. So our archaea, that live in the soil,
acidify our water slightly which leads to
sinkholes. Archaea is a separate domain by most biologists. They have the prokaryotic cell structure
and they are known for
living in extreme environments. The picture of the hot spring there with the archaea, from Yellowstone,
is an extreme environment. They also live in super salty water like the great salt lake, the dead sea... hypersaline. They live in methane, methane rich environments...
because they smell, the swamp gas, human colon (and mammalian colons in
general). So that's the Archaea. The eubacteria are a little more modern bacteria evolutionarily, like the picture there is gram positive. The stain
sits
in the cell wall there. You also have gram negative, which won't
stain. You can also classify them by shape...
round, rod and spiral. You can classify them whether they're
heterotrophs or autotrophs, so trophic level ...things like that. Some of the symbiotic bacteria
produce light, so these light producing organs on fish are actually bacteria filled organs called photophores. Ahh...the puffer fish. Puffer fish have this bacteria living in its liver and bones which makes it toxic. So the origi
nal zombie (in voodoo culture)
was made from the ground powder of puffer fish... was actually from the bacteria that made this toxin,
it's a neurotoxin that paralyzed. People that believed to be zombies and voodoo medicine that's where the whole zombie craze
originally stems from... is the tetrodotoxin of the puffer fish. Fugu...fugu is sushi grade puffer fish... dangerous job cutting puffer fishes...the
sushi chefs got to be very careful because the fugu
can contain the poisons that that can m
ake the...
that can kill you. Kill you. Definitely. People that eat the fugu get numb
face... It tingles, so they get a little
thrill. I wrote a song about it... I, I can't
feel my face when I fugu (baby...) It was very popular a few
years ago... drum roll. All right, Division
Cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are the "cyan" blue-green
bacteria... used to be known blue-green algae. Photosynthetic . Fix Nitrogen. Endosymbiosis...
You know with that theory we're looking at present-day chloroplasts co
ming from the cyanobacteria. Some specimens anabaena and oscillatoria. Filamentous versus individual cells. Those are under a light microscope. They fix nitrogen, like I said ammonia
or nitrogen gas converted to nitrate. Protists and kingdom Protista...
have a nucleus, plant-like, animal-like and fungi-like. They are unicellular or colonial... Algae is your photosynthetic...
Kingdom Protista, they don't have multi-cell reproductive
organisms, so they're not considered plants. They produce up to
90% of the world's oxygen.
They remove carbon dioxide from the air. So they're the lungs of our planet... They're the base of most ocean food chains. And in most freshwater food chains. So They are the linchpin to marine life...
the algae. The phytoplankton and the macroalgae. The classification you need to know... Cyanobacteria. The diatoms- Bacillariophyta. The green algae- Chlorophyta. Take a look at Chrysophyta...we used to place diatoms in the chrysophytes,
because they're golden brown. But
the diatoms we
now place in Bacillariophyta. Dinophyta- dinoflagellates...also used
to be called Pyrrophyta. You gotta know those. The Coccoliths... we'll talk a little bit about but we won't really study them in depth. Phaeophytes...
the brown algae and the Rhodophyta- the red algae. So those are your groups of algae... A nerd like me took a class, a whole graduate
level class on algae called phycology, so I was a
I was a big student of algae back in my youth Diatoms
and Dinoflagellates are p
ictured there from a typical
microscope. The diatoms are...
we loosely classify them by shape. Centric and Pennate. Silica based life form. Dinoflagellates...
important dinoflagellates are the zooxanthellae that
live in coral. A lot of coral have algae living in
their tissues. They also are free living...
bioluminescent and sometimes (cause) red tides. Others toxic...
toxic blooms. There's Karenia brevis... you can see it's a light microscope
image...looks like a little red blob. You can see th
e flagella in the
scanning electron microscope image. You can see the tint in the water in
that that picture... that's what we get in the Gulf and in
Tampa Bay. It's always present at a background
level... it blooms due to nutrient pulses like most algae (spring/fall). Bioluminescent.... That is a Pyrocystis sp. That shows you a
bioluminescent dinoflagellate right there. They use it in what we call the burglar alarm response. You see a copepod feeding on dinoflagellate. It shakes the
water up, s
o the dinoflagellates glows. This glowing attracts a bigger fish...
anyone who fishes knows fishing dock lights is how you get the
big ones, the big one comes because of the glow and either eats
or scares away the copepods and the dinoflagellates are free to live...
copepod gone. Coccoliths- E. huxleyi is the most common, they bloom so prodigiously you can see them from outer space, yet they're so small you need a microscope, a
electron microscope to see them. You cannot make them out even in a
light
microscope. So that is a lot (of cells). We did mention the the different
algae...the macroalgae earlier, but you're going to need
to know the divisions which are as follows: Chlorophyta- the green algae Ulva sp. is our first representative...
sea lettuce. Enteromorpha sp. is our second
representative... it is in the same genus as Ulva, but
it's tube shape not a blade. Codium sp. is an invasive species in Florida...
called dead man's fingers or felty fingers. (Genus) Cladophora is a branc
hing
filamentous green algae... we don't take it to species...
because you need genetics to tell the proper species. They all
superficially look too similar to distinguish... Phaeophyta are the brown algae. The important one around here is Sargassum sp. (Genus) Laminaria is the largest group of kelp... and then the (Genus) Fucus and fucoids are (called) rockweeds. As I said Sargassum sp. or "Gulfweed" is the most important... because of that huge floating
mat that we have discussed a few times.
Rhodophyta- the red algae.Y they are
the most common and they are the most viable at depth... because red light attenuates. Nori (or Porphyra sp.) is commercially the
most important of the red alga. We use it in sushi... Coralina sp. has a calcium-based
skeleton and it adds structure and holds together much of the world's coral reefs. Genus Polysiphona are the branching
filamentous red algae. We often find them washed up to shore here in Tampa Bay. That is carrageenan gel... as you can see it ha
s an air space
and it's a flexible u-shape. That allows gels
not to be solid, a solid's molecules stack up really close together...
you can't move through them there's no flex, a gel has that flex where it bows in and out and that allows it to
be an amorphous solid or a solid that flows. So the the geometry of
the molecule is what determines its flexibility. that flexibility is commercially important
in gels. Algae blooms, like we looked at,
nutrient pulses and temperature daylight...caused
its
growth. When it grows out of control because of a nutrient
pollution it's called eutrophication. That algae then dies, decays and
robs oxygen from the water and creates dead zones. So huge blooms of
algae are detrimental to the environment, and occur due to nutrient
pollution. The protozoa that we look at: the Globergina sp. is a common foramenifera.
You can see all the holes in it, so Globergina sp. and our radiolarians (are
silica base)... they both are amoeboid in structure. The forminifera,
their fossils help us determine ancient
climates because they're very temperature sensitive
and they preserve very well. We take deep sea core samples and
we can determine ancient climates by what forminifera we find in the sediment. They're very important uh for us in that particular way. The radiolarians. They just kind of look really cool to me. They look like alien helmets but they are a silica based life form. The fungi, the fungi...
not as important in the marine environment, outside of th
e
lichens that we study. We're really not going to address them
at length... There's maritime lichens growing on
the rocks, they can encrust, sometimes
they look mossy. We call that reindeer moss or crustose, when they're not when they, just are like crust on it. It's a algae living in the fungus symbiotically. So the algae contributes
photosynthate the fungus holds water... provides habitat for the algae and
that's mutualistic symbiosis. This also backs up the
endosymbiotic theory of cellular
evolution. All right, our plants. There is a red
mangrove with its propagules. Those propagules are baby plants growing
right on it and then they fall off it's analogous to live birth. You can also see the yellow sacrificial leaves, in this case. So our the sea grasses are our first group, of submergent, submergent plants... do not break the water surface, they
pollinate underwater, they have flowers, seeds, their stems
are under the sediment and their leaves stick up. so they're bladed but they
're not true grasses. Manatee grass, shoal grass and turtle
grass are the three species you will need to know how to identify
via your field work. So that's what they look like...you can
see the turtle grass is thick. The manatee grass is like wires,
that spin in your hands, and the shoal grass is short...three to
four inches long, flat and very narrow. Sea grass are threatened by
boat props because it cuts through the underground stem killing it and they
won't grow back. Its like girdling a tre
e...it kills it. Nutrients smother it because they need clear water, sedimentation smothers it because they need clear water. The mangrove communities Red toward the water's edge, Black behind them, White furthest upland... then we have a buttonwood,
which is not a true mangrove but an associate. The red mangroves have prop roots
or stilt roots. Natives refer to them as walking trees and they have long pencil-like propagules. That image is from our Fort DeSoto tide pool. The black mangroves prop
agule kind of
reminds me of a lima bean. They have the pneumatophore roots, the
elongated silver bottom salt exuding leaves... They are totally unrelated to the white mangroves. The white mangroves- you see the arrow
pointing to the nectarie. That is a
salt-sugar balance (gland). The thicker, paler, tattered leaves are
a little more salt tolerant, that's why they're in the back, because the back
doesn't get flushed daily so the salt sits there for days until it gets
another flush. So the the fur
thest back. And then we mentioned
the buttonwood mangrove may or may not be a mangrove. Same family
as the white mangrove, associated, because it doesn't actively
exude salt like the true white mangroves. Spartina sp. partina is a marsh grass...
coldgrass. Cordgrass that is our salt marsh grass. There's
different species up and down the east coast of the United States we have
Spartina. That is the
main salt marsh plant. It's an emergent grass. Our common dune plants are salt tolerant
but obvious
ly they don't actively excrete
salt. We have the sea oat... and below that I
have a piece of the Australian pine that is its seed. Above that we got your palm... Dead center we have a
seaside purslane, succulent. Dune sunflower, Railroad vine, Sea grapes, Poison ivy, The cedar...that baby is
honeymoon island. Prickly pear cactus... oh there's the bald eagle in a
pine and a nest. So that's a that's a beauty. That's before I got my really good camera, that was only a half decent
camera. That was m
any years ago... and then there's the in bloom or it with seed actually, Brazilian
pepper.
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