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Plankton – Drifters
Plankton are drifters that cannot swim against a current. 1

2. 01/16/13
Plankton:
Plankton come in all shapes and sizes. Unlike the cartoon plankton of Sponge Bob, real plankton don’t play with remote controls and don’t have eyebrows. 2

3. Plant Plankton - Phytoplankton
01/16/13
Plant Plankton - Phytoplankton
There are two main categories of plankton: plant plankton (phytoplankton) and animal plankton (zooplankton).
Plant plankton gets energy from sunlight just like plants (images depict 2 species of PHYTOPLANKTON– note the green color, chlorophyll) 3

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Diatoms
Diatoms are a kind of phytoplankton that have a clear, glass shell. 4

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Dinoflagellates
Dinoflagellates are a kind of plankton that have a long ‘whip’ or tentacle.
Sometimes there can be such high numbers of dinoflagellates in the water that they can change the color of the ocean (ex. Red tide) 5

6. Animal Plankton - Zooplankton
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Animal Plankton - Zooplankton
Zooplankton (animal plankton) get their energy from feeding on phytoplankton or other zooplankton. (image: copepods and nauplii) 6

7. Holoplankton – whole life as plankton
01/16/13
Holoplankton – whole life as plankton
There are two different kinds of animal plankton: holoplankton and meroplankton. Holoplankton spend their whole life as plankton. Meroplankton spend only part of their life as plankton.
Examples of Holoplankton: copepods spend their whole life as plankton, as do jellies. 7

8. Holoplankton: Jellyfish
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Holoplankton: Jellyfish
Jellyfish can be large, but are not able to swim against currents, so are considered plankton (drifters). 8

9. Meroplankton – only part of life as plankton (plankton transformers!)
01/16/13
Meroplankton – only part of life as plankton (plankton transformers!)
Many organisms that you find on the rocky shores were once plankton! The babies (larvae) of many sea stars, sea urchins, crabs, worms, snails, limpets and other invertebrates are planktonic. The larvae then settle and metamorphose into the juveniles of what we are familiar with as adults.
sea star 9

10. Meroplankton - barnacle
01/16/13
These are images of the stages of a barnacle’s life: it starts out drifting in the ocean as a plankton (called a nauplius), then sinks to a surface and changes into a cyprid. It then glues its head down on the surface, secretes a shell and changes into an adult barnacle 10

11. Meroplankton: snail 01/16/13
This is a picture of a baby snail that starts out its life drifting in the plankton (its larva is called a veliger) and then sinks to the bottom and turns into an adult snail. 11

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Meroplankton: Crab
A crab starts off its life as plankton (zoea and megalopa) before becoming an adult crab. 12

13. What eats plankton?
01/16/13
Animals that filter water for food eat both plant and animal plankton
(e.g. humpback whale, clam, basking shark, sand dollar, mussels, sea anemones). 13