Marine Mammals

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Marine mammals live mostly or entirely in the water, depend completely on food taken from the sea, and display anatomical features, such as fins, that adapt them for the aquatic lifestyle. Most marine mammals are quite intelligent compared with other marine animals. This trait, along with their generally friendly nature, makes them very popular with the public.

Mammals have a body covering of hair, maintain a constant warm body temperature and nourish their young with milk produced by the mammary glands of the mother.

Sea Otters have thick coats of fur and feed on marine invertebrates near shore.

Pinnipeds:Seals, sea lions and walruses: have limbs modified to form flippers and are better adapted to life at sea than to life on land.

Sirenians: are known as manatees and dugongs. They are totally aquatic mammals that feed on a varitety of aquatic vegetation. The primary difference between them is that manatees inhabit both seas and inland rivers and lakes. Dugongs are strictly marine mammals living in coastal areas.

Cetaceans have a fishlike body shape and are the mammals most suited to life in the sea.

Special physiological adaptations allow them to dive to great depths and tp remain submerged for long periods of time. They are intelligent animals that display a range of behaviors for cummunication and investigating their envrionment. Some use echolocation to navigate, find prey and avoid predators.

Baleen whales have plates of baleen instead of teeth and feed primarily on plankton, such as krill.

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Reptiles and Birds

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Reptiles have been successful in both terrestrial and marine envionrments. The same characteristics that allowed the ancestors of reptiles to conquer land were also useful in allowing their descendents to return to the sea. The ancestors of modern reptiles first began to appear about 100 million years ago. Modern day retiles include crocodilians, turtles, lizards and snakes all of whioch are represented in the marine environment.

Marine Crocodiles- Salt water crocodiles are large animals that feed mainly on fishes and some have been known to attack and kill sharks.

Sea Turtles- There are 7 species of sea turtles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-07n8lsRUQ

Leatherback

Hawksbill

Kemp's Ridley

Green

Loggerhead

Flatback

Olive Ridley

Marine Iguana- the only marine lizard of the Galapogos Islands .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO_9zm9tsCs here is a video about marine iguanas.

Sea Snakes -There are about 50 species of sea snakes that live in the marine environment.

Seabirds- only about 250 of the approximate 8,500 bird species are adapted for life in and around the ocean.

Shorebirds or waders have long legs for wading and thin sharp bills for finding food in the shallow water and sand.

Gulls are efficent predators and scavengers.

Pelicans are large bodied birds that feed by scooping up large amounts of water with their gular pouch. Boobies, Cormorants, and frigate birds are related to pelicans

Birds known as tubenoses are represented by albatrosses and petrels.

Penguins are the birds most adapted to life at sea. Their streamlined bodies and flippers make them excellent swimmers.

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Fishes

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Marine fishes can be found from the surface waters of the ocean to its deepest trenches. their species outnumber all other vertebrate species combined. They display an amazing array of adaptations that allow them to exploit virtually every niche. Fish are commercially important for human food, fertilizer, and other products.

Hagfish and lampreys are jawless fishes.

Hagfish

Lamprey attatched to fish

Sharks, skates and rays have skeletons composed of cartilage.

Sharks have streamlined bodies and highly developed senses that help them to be efficent predators

Most marine fishes have skeletons composed primarily of bone.

The shape of the fish's body is primarily determined by the characteristics of its environment.

Many fishes exhibit coloration and color patterns that help them blend in with their envionrment .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSPptPhbFVc This video shows examples how fish use camoflauge to their advantage.

Bony fishes exploit virtually every food resource available in the marine enviornment.

Most bony fishes have a swim bladder that helps them maintain neutal buoyancy in the water column.

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Molluscs

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Molluscs are one of the largest most successful groups of animals. The term mollusca(Latin for "soft") refers to animals soft bodies, which in most cases re covered by a shell made of calcium carbonate.

Molluscs are represented by familiar animals such as snails, clams, octopuses and squid (like Squidward!)

Gastropods (class Gastropoda; gastro meaning "stomach" and poda meaning "foot") exhibit tremendous amount of diversity. Most have shells but some of them have lost them. They exhibit a wide variety of feeding styles. there are herbivores, carnivores, scavengers,deposit feeders and suspension feeders.

The sexes are separate in most gastropods. Most species exhibit internal fertilization.

Bivalves are molluscs that have shells divided into two jointed halves called valves. The group includes clams, oysters, mussels scallops and shipworms.

(Below is a picture of a giant clam.) The majority of bivalves sexes are separate and during reproduction the sperm and eggs are shed into the water column.

Cephalopods are molluscs such as the octopus, squid and cuttlefish. The term cephalopod means "head-footed" and refers to the animals foot which is modified into a head-like structure.

There are two main groups of cephalopods. One group nautiloids is covered by a shell. The other group is the coleoids which includes squids, ocotopods and cuttlefish. These animals do not have a shell.

The Blue Ringed octopus advertises that it is toxic by its bright blue rings.

This is a picture of a Nautilus

Cephalopods can communicate with each other through movements of their arms and bodies and by color changes. Here is a video about how cuttlefish are masters of camouflage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4PbW893ik

Cephalopods are carnivores . Their prey is located with highly developed eyes and captured by the tentacles. They have a powerful pair of beak-like jaws in their oral cavity.

This video is called Shark vs. Octopus. Can you guess who wins? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9A-oxUMAy8

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Sponges and Cnidarians

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The sea is inhabited by a large number of animal species. They range from microscopic worms to giant squids. Regardless of their size each fills a particular niche in the overall marine ecosystem.

What are animals?

1. Animals are multicellular.

2. Animals are eukaryotic.

3. Animals cannot produce their own food, so they depend on other organisms for nutrients. They are heterotrophs.

4. Animals, with the exception of adult sponges can actively move.

Animals that lack vertebral column are invertebrates, whereas animals that have a vertebral column are vertebrates.

Sponges- are simple, asymmetrical, sessile animals (meaning they are permanently attached to a solid surface.) Sponged exhibit a wide variety of sizes and shapes, and their shape is frequently determined by the shape of the bottom, or material on which they grow and by the water current.

Although many living sponges are a drab, some species are brightly colored. Red, yellow, green, orange and purple are common

A Sponges body is unique in that it is built around a system of water canals because of the sponged sessile lifestyle. Their bodies are full of tiny holes, or pores called ostia through which large amounts of water circulate.

Because sponges feed on material that is suspended in seawater, they are called suspension feeders or filter feeders because they filter their food from the water.

Sponges can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Asexual reproduction can either be budding or fragmentation.

Although they are simple sessile animals, sponges interact with other marine organisms in several ways. They compete for space. They are links in some marine food chains. Sponges form many symbiotic relationships and they provide habitat for other animals.

Cnidarians: Animals with stinging cells

Cnidarians are a group of animals that consist of hydroids, corals, sea anemones and jellyfish.

Cnidarians have bodies that exhibit radial symmetry . This means that many planes can be drawn through the central axis that will divide the animal into two equivalent halves.

Cnidarians can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

One of the most important features of cnidarians is their stinging cells(cnidocytes). The stinging cell contains a stinging organelle called cnida.

Many species of cnidarian such as the Portugese man-of-war can cause painful stings.

The stings of a box jellyfish can be fatal

Types of Cnidarians:

Hydrozoans- or hydroids, composed of individuals that are physically connected to share resources like food.

Jellyfish and Box Jellyfish- most jellyfish float with the currents and are not strong swimmers. They have photorecptors that allow them to determine if its dark or light out.

Anthozoans- Sean anemones, corals and gorgonians. Benthic animals and all adults are sessile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyCigZ_bsTM Here is video from National Geographic called Jellyfish Invasion!

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Multicellular Primary Producers

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Most of the primary production in marine ecosystems is done by phytoplankton, but seaweeds and flowering plants also contribute.

Seaweeds are multi cellular algae that inhabit the oceans. There are three groups of seaweed that will be discussed. Red algae, Brown algae and Green algae.

Most species of seaweed are benthic. growing on rock, sand, mud and coral on the sea bottom, on other organisms. Seaweeds inhabit about 2% of the sea floor.

Seaweeds can reproduce both sexually and asexually. This type of asexual reproduction is called fragmentation.

Green algae are a diverse group of organisms that contain the same kind of pigments in land plants: chlorophylls a and b and carotenoids. Most species are freshwater and phytoplankton.

Important as seasonal sources of food for marine animals and also contribute to the formation of coral reefs.

Red algae are primarily marine organisms. About 98% of the 6,000 species are marine, which means red algae has the highest diversity among seaweeds. Red algae contain the accessory pigments phycoerythrin and phycocyanins.

Several red algae species are used commercially because of their gelling(stiffening) qualities. For example Agar is used primarily for making petri dishes. Another kind of algae carrageenan is also used as a thickening and binding agent in ice cream, pudding and salad dressings.

Brown algae are represented in forms such as rockweeds, kelps, and sargassum.

The 1500 species of brown algae are almost exclusively marine inhabitants.

They range in size from microscopic to the largest of all algae, the giant kelps which can attain lengths of 330 feet!! Much of the familiar seaweed seen along the shore and in shallow water is brown algae.

The life cycle of most brown algae consists of an alteration of generations between a sporophyte and a gametophyte.

Brown algae is also harvested for commercial use as thickening agents in dental, cosmetic and food industries.

Free floating clumps of sargassum weed forma complex three dimensional habitat that is home to a variety of unique organisms like this sargassum fish!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grh6cYcPfBk Here is an awesome video about a Sargassum Fish and how it utilizes the seaweed as its habitat!

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Marine Microbes

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Marine Microbes are organisms that are invisible to the naked eye. They include viruses, one-celled organisms and occasionally fungi. These microbes belong to all three domains of life and play many roles in marine ecosystems, such as producer, consumer,decomposer and parasite. Although unseen by visitors to the ocean, they are the most numerous organisms in the sea.

Viral Characteristics- viruses rely entirely on host cells for energy, material and organelles for duplicating themselves, a process called viral replication and can only reproduce inside a host cell.

Viruses seem to affect all groups of living organisms. Individual viruses are usually host specific, but families of viruses vary widely in the groups they infect. For example, the Papillomaviridae family of viruses, is restricted to vertebrates. But the Rhabdovirdaw family of viruses infects vertebrates, insects and plants.

Many viral families are specific for bacteria, and they are generally called Bacteriopahges which translates into "bacteria eaters."

Marine Bacteria are primary producers, decomposers, agents in biogeochemical cycles, food for other marine inhabitants, modifiers of marine sediments and symbions and pathogens.

Bacteria have cells with simple, prokaryotic organization. Bacteria reproduce asexually by binary fission. IN this process a cells genetic material is duplicated, a membrane form between the duplicated, a membrane forms between the duplicated DNA molecules and the cell splits into two daughter cells of roughly equal size.

Cyanobacteria- most familiar; photosynthetic marine bacteria; also known as blue-green algae.

Chemosynthetic bacteria- present where light is absent from the water and sediments. Chemosynthetic bacteria use organic chemicals rather than light as a source of energy.

Heterotrophic bacteria- decomposers, which use available organic matter in their surroundings to obtain energy and material for synthesis of their own compounds and for general metabolism. These bacteria release exoenzymes that with the capacity to digest cellulose, lignin, chitin, keratin and other natural molecules that are otherwise resistant to decay.

Symbiotic bacteria- Symbiosis refers to the biological phenomenon in which two different organisms form a very close association with each other. Many bacteria have evolved symbiotic relationships with a variety of marine organisms. For example: several squid species have several bioluminescent bacteria in glands that are embedded in the ink sac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QUt-Rrs6Co

Here is a video of a bioluminescent squid hunting !!

Many species of fish like this flashlight fish(right) have also developed symbiotic relationships with bioluminescent bacteria. The bacteria are usually found in pits or sacs located in the animals skin near the eye or jaw or on a lure like structure like this angler fish (left).

We have examined Marine microbes because of their abundance- more than any other organism in the sea- diversity, and significance in marine food webs, population biology and disease.

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Basics of Life

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Living organisms are composed of cells. These basic units of life contain all the chemicals necessary to support life and pass along hereditary information. To understand the wide variety of organisms that inhabit the sea, it is necessary to know something about the chemicals that make up cells and the cells themselves.

Some of the most important chemicals in living organisms are large molecules called macromolecules. There are four major classes: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.

Carbohydrates contain the elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The most common in living organisms are sugars and polysaccharides.

Glucose is an important sugar that is used by marine organisms, such as a fish,as a source of energy.

Lipids- Fats, oils and waxes are all examples of lipids. Many contain molecules called fatty acids. Simple fats or triglycerides are composed of three fatty acids attached to a carbohydrate molecule known as glycerol. Marine organisms use triglycerides to store energy, to cushion vital organs and to increase buoyancy.

This young whale is insulated from the cold by a thick layer of blubber that is composed of triglyceride fat.

Proteins-polymers made up of basic units called amino acids. Twenty different amino acids make up the various proteins found in living organisms. The number and type of amino acids determine the characteristics of protein molecules. Within cells, individual amino acids are assembled into chains called polypeptides. The complex structures of protein molecules allow them to serve several functions. For instance the primary structural components of animals, muscles and connective tissues are composed of protein. Proteins known as enzymes are essential for life. They speed up the rate of chemical reactions allowing metabolism to function efficiently.

The muscles that allow this pelican to fly are composed of protein.

Nucleic Acids- are polymers of molecules called nucleotides. Each nucelotide is composed of five-carbon sugar, a nitrogen containing base and a phosphate group. There are two types of nucleic acids found in living organisms: deoxyribosenucleic acid(DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA)

DNA is a large molecule with the shape of a helix. Each nucelotide found in DNA contains the sugar deoxyribose and one of the following four nitrogen containing bases: adenine, guanine, cytoisine or thymine. DNA contains an organisms genetic material or genes as is capable of copying itself so the genes can be passed from one generation to another.

RNA is composed of nucelotides that contain the sugar ribose and the same bases found in DNA , with the exception that in RNA the base uracil takes the place of thymine. RNA is usually single stranded.

All organisms are composed of cells and every cell is capable of the basic processes of life: metabolism, growth and reproduction.

There are two types of cells in nature: Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic cells.

Prokaryotic cells lack a nucleus and do not have any membrane bound organelles. Organisms with prokaryotic cells are called Prokaryotes.

Eukaryotic cells have wells defined nucleus and many membrane bound organelles. Organisms with eukaryotic cells or eukaryote can be either unicellular or multi cellular.

All cells reproduce by a process of cell division, giving rise to new cells. In multi cellular organisms, groups of like cells form tissues. Different tissues combine to form organs, and organs can combine to form organ systems.

Evolution is the process by which the genetic composition of populations of organisms changes over time.

Natural selection favors the survival and reproduction of those organisms that possess the variations that are best suited to their environment.

A species is a group of physically similar, potentially interbreeding organisms that share a gene pool, are reproductively isolated from other such groups, and are able to produce viable offspring.

The binomial system of nomenclature uses two words, the genus and species epithet to identify an organism.

Most biologists classify organisms into one of three domains, categories that reflect theories about evolutionary relationships.

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Science and Marine Biology

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There is perhaps no better way to learn about the delicate balance of natural systems than to study marine organisms and the communities they form. This pursuit is not only fascinating in itself but also teaches us how important the ocean and its inhabitants are to humans and why we should try to preserve and conserve this resource.

Marine Biology is the study of the sea's diverse inhabitants and their relationships to each other and their environment.

The history of marine biology is one of changing perspectives that have shaped the modern science and its applications.

Oceans are the principal physical feature of our planet. They cover nearly 71% of the earth's surface and represent the last great expanse on this planet to be charted and explored. The physical characteristics of these great bodies of water directly and indirectly affect our everyday lives, and the living organisms that inhabit them are an important source of food and natural products.

Oceans play in important role in everyday life because they affect weather patterns, provide food and vital resources.

Marine laboratories play an important role in education, conservation and biological research.

It is important to study marine biology in order to make informed decisions about how the oceans and their resources should be used and managed.

Scientists use an organized approach called the scientific method to investigate natural phenomenon.

Human interest in the sea probably dates back to the time we first set eyes on it, fished its waters, and sailed across it. The great expanse of water with its variety of strange and wonderful creatures has inspired awe, wonder and curiosity, myth and at times fear. This interest in the sea and its creatures was the beginning of the sciences of oceanography and marine biology.

Here is a video from the documentary Blue Planet. Please click on the link below and enjoy!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8rBYNP0UKM

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For the love of all things in the ocean...

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For the next two weeks our class will be focusing on Marine Biology. The discussions will take place by using a blog to share your thoughts about the subject. I will be posting some interesting facts,pictures and videos that relate to a topic for that day. The following topics will be discussed in our blogs:

Science and Marine Biology: Importance of the Oceans and Marine Organisms

Marine Organisms: Each of these topics will be covered in separate blogs:

• Basics of Life: Molecules, Cells, Evolution and Biological Classification



• Marine Microbes



• Multi cellular Primary Producers



• Sponges, Cnidarians, Comb Jellies and Marine Worms



• Molluscs, Arthropods, Echinoderms and Invertebrate Chordates



• Fishes



• Reptiles and Birds



• Marine Mammals

Marine Ecosystems

Humans and the Sea

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