Portal:Marine life

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A male whale shark at the Georgia Aquarium.

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Killer whales (orcas) are highly visible marine apex predators that hunt many large species. But most biological activity in the ocean takes place with microscopic marine organisms that cannot be seen individually with the naked eye, such as marine bacteria and phytoplankton.

Marine life, sea life, or ocean life is the plants, animals, and other organisms that live in the salt water of seas or oceans, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life affects the nature of the planet. Marine organisms, mostly microorganisms, produce oxygen and sequester carbon. Marine life, in part, shape and protect shorelines, and some marine organisms even help create new land (e.g. coral building reefs).

Marine invertebrates exhibit a wide range of modifications to survive in poorly oxygenated waters, including breathing tubes as in mollusc siphons. Fish have gills instead of lungs, although some species of fish, such as the lungfish, have both. Marine mammals (e.g. dolphins, whales, otters, and seals) need to surface periodically to breathe air. (Full article...)


Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy. (Full article...)

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Arthropods (/ˈɑːrθrəpɒd/) are invertebrates in the phylum Arthropoda. They possess an exoskeleton with a cuticle made of chitin, often mineralised with calcium carbonate, a body with differentiated (metameric) segments, and paired jointed appendages. In order to keep growing, they must go through stages of moulting, a process by which they shed their exoskeleton to reveal a new one. They are an extremely diverse group, with up to 10 million species.

Haemolymph is the analogue of blood for most arthropods. An arthropod has an open circulatory system, with a body cavity called a haemocoel through which haemolymph circulates to the interior organs. Like their exteriors, the internal organs of arthropods are generally built of repeated segments. Their nervous system is "ladder-like", with paired ventral nerve cords running through all segments and forming paired ganglia in each segment. Their heads are formed by fusion of varying numbers of segments, and their brains are formed by fusion of the ganglia of these segments and encircle the esophagus. The respiratory and excretory systems of arthropods vary, depending as much on their environment as on the subphylum to which they belong. (Full article...)
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The following are images from various marine life-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  • ... You have a greater chance of being struck by lightning, drowning in a bathtub, fatally falling down stairs, or dying from a bee sting than being killed by a shark.
  • ... In Australia in 1935, a tiger shark vomited up a human arm. The shark had not killed anyone but had scavenged the arm after a murder victim had been cut up with a knife and thrown into sea.
  • ... the Beluga whale is also known as the Sea Canary on account of its high-pitched squeaks, squeals, and whistles.
  • ... Marked by lines and spots, triggershish inhabit warm coastal waters of the Atlantic, Mediterranean and the Indo-Pacific.
  • ... the songs of whales were sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft to represent sounds from Planet Earth.
  • ... the Sperm Whale, at 18 metres long, is the largest toothed animal to have ever lived.

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Electron microscope image of the compound eye - the eyes are deep black in the living animal
Electron microscope image of the compound eye - the eyes are deep black in the living animal
Photo credit: Gerd Alberti and Uwe Kils

The Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a species of krill found in the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean. Antarctic krill are shrimp-like invertebrates that live in large schools, called swarms, sometimes reaching densities of 10,000 - 30,000 individual animals per cubic meter.

Although the uses for and reasons behind the development of their massive black compound eyes (pictured above) remain a mystery, there is no doubt that Antarctic krill have one of the most fantastic structures for vision seen in nature.

Krill can shrink in size from one molt to the next, which is generally thought to be a survival strategy to adapt to scarce food supplies (a smaller body needs less energy, i.e., food). However, the animal's eyes do not shrink when this happens. The ratio between eye size and body length has thus been found to be a reliable indicator of starvation.

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