Talk:Phytoplankton

I've rewritten this to fit better with the plankton page, and corrected some inaccuracies:

fungi are decomposers not photosynthesisers, so are not phytoplankton.
plankton do not 'hover', which implies an active process, but drift passively in the water column.
primary production is a term for the cumulative amount of carbon fixed per area over a period of time by phytoplankton.
some oceanic ecosystems are supplied by chemical energy from hydrothermal vents.

I've commented out some stuff about zooplankton and food chains - this should go in a zooplankton page. Agree?

There's a lot more I can add, which I will do in time...

Tonderai 20:52, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Page appears to have some vandalism.

Ref to "stew fish peoplee" which doesn't look very scientific...

Fixed it - Vsmith 12:13, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Atmosphereic Oxygen production Smackdown: Rainforest vs. Phytoplankton

This article says that phytoplankton produce approximately 98% of atmospheric oxygen. but the rainforest article says 40%. Which is right? How does the rain forests and phytoplankton relate to the carbon cycle? Can someone add to this article (or potentially the phytoplankton article) or add links to the correct source?

Good catch! This is a pretty common occurrence in presenting numbers and percentages and speaks directly to why we need to cite sources when writing articles that present such numerical "facts". Although we can trace by history who put that in, the point is, the contributer either pulled it out of his/her ass or got it from somewhere. It is not the kind of information that most scientists would have first-hand knowledge of. I will delete until a source can be provided. - Marshman 04:18, 3 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I figure it is important since I often hear the phytoplankton number tossed around by people who are more or less opposed to preserving the Rainforest. Thanks for the help!