Plankton part 1

Intro: The word Plankton comes from the word planktos meaning drifter as in that they can not swim against the current. Plankton can be anything from algae to a baby turttle. There are four ways to clasify plankton; what they eat, what color they are, their lifestyle, and their size. The two ways for plankton to obtain sustinance are by eating other plankton or by photosynthesis, plant plankton or those that eat by photosynthesis are called phytoplankton. The carniverous plankton or heterotropic, hetero meaning diferent, are called zooplankton, zoo meaning animal. The color of a plankton mostly aplies to algae or seaweed, there are many diferent colors ranging from the usual green to red or brown all the way to golden, blue green algae is the most important though because it produces ninety percent of our breathable oxygen. The lifestyle of a plankton may seem odd to classify by but it is very important. Some plankton only spend part of their lives as plankton, those are called meroplankton, mero meaning part, these are organisms like tutttles or larval fish. Holoplankton or plankton that spend their whole life as plankton are what we normaly thinkof when we hear plankton. The size of a plankton is very important because there is such a range. There are many groups for clasifying size so I will just mention a fuew. To be classified as a mega plankton they need to be at least 2mm across, this is the largest classification so even jellyfish that have 100 foot long tentacles fall in to this catagory. Another catagory is that of micro plankton thse plankton are fom 0.6 mm to 0.2 mm. The smallest catagory is that of ultra plankton from the size of 0.005 mm and smaller.