title: Marine life

text: The history of life was that of the unicellular eukaryotes, prokaryotes and archaea until about 610 million years ago when multicellular organisms began to appear in the oceans in the Ediacaran period. The evolution of multicellularity occurred in multiple independent events, in organisms as diverse as sponges, brown algae, cyanobacteria, slime moulds and myxobacteria. In 2016 scientists reported that, about 800 million years ago, a minor genetic change in a single molecule called GK-PID may have allowed organisms to go from a single cell organism to one of many cells.


title: Marine life

text: Soon after the emergence of these first multicellular organisms, a remarkable amount of biological diversity appeared over a span of about 10 million years, in an event called the Cambrian explosion. Here, the majority of types of modern animals appeared in the fossil record, as well as unique lineages that subsequently became extinct. Various triggers for the Cambrian explosion have been proposed, including the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere from photosynthesis.


title: Marine life

text: About 500 million years ago, plants and fungi started colonising the land. Evidence for the appearance of the first land plants occurs in the Ordovician, around , in the form of fossil spores. Land plants began to diversify in the Late Silurian, from around . The colonisation of the land by plants was soon followed by arthropods and other animals. Insects were particularly successful and even today make up the majority of animal species. Amphibians first appeared around 364 million years ago, followed by early amniotes and birds around 155 million years ago (both from "reptile"-like lineages), mammals around 129 million years ago, homininae around 10 million years ago and modern humans around 250,000 years ago. However, despite the evolution of these large animals, smaller organisms similar to the types that evolved early in this process continue to be highly successful and dominate the Earth, with the majority of both biomass and species being prokaryotes.


title: Marine life

text: Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.


title: Marine life

text: Microorganisms make up about 70% of the marine biomass. A microorganism, or microbe, is a microscopic organism too small to be recognised with the naked eye. It can be single-celled or multicellular. Microorganisms are diverse and include all bacteria and archaea, most protozoa such as algae, fungi and certain microscopic animals such as rotifers.


title: Marine life

text: Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify viruses (and viroids) as microorganisms, but others consider these as nonliving.


title: Marine life

text: Microorganisms are crucial to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers. Some microorganisms are pathogenic, causing disease and even death in plants and animals. As inhabitants of the largest environment on Earth, microbial marine systems drive changes in every global system. Microbes are responsible for virtually all the photosynthesis that occurs in the ocean, as well as the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, other nutrients and trace elements.


title: Marine life

text: Microscopic life undersea is diverse and still poorly understood, such as for the role of viruses in marine ecosystems. Most marine viruses are bacteriophages, which are harmless to plants and animals, but are essential to the regulation of saltwater and freshwater ecosystems. They infect and destroy bacteria in aquatic microbial communities, and are the most important mechanism of recycling carbon in the marine environment. The organic molecules released from the dead bacterial cells stimulate fresh bacterial and algal growth. Viral activity may also contribute to the biological pump, the process whereby carbon is sequestered in the deep ocean.


title: Marine life

text: A stream of airborne microorganisms circles the planet above weather systems but below commercial air lanes. Some peripatetic microorganisms are swept up from terrestrial dust storms, but most originate from marine microorganisms in sea spray. In 2018, scientists reported that hundreds of millions of viruses and tens of millions of bacteria are deposited daily on every square meter around the planet.


title: Marine life

text: Microscopic organisms live throughout the biosphere. The mass of prokaryote microorganisms — which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms — may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Single-celled barophilic marine microbes have been found at a depth of in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. Microorganisms live inside rocks below the sea floor under of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as beneath the seabed off Japan. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is ("Methanopyrus kandleri"). In 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living below the ice of Antarctica. According to one researcher, "You can find microbes everywhere — they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are."


title: Marine life

text: Viruses are small infectious agents that do not have their own metabolism and can replicate only inside the living cells of other organisms. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. The linear size of the average virus is about one one-hundredth that of the average bacterium. Most viruses cannot be seen with an optical microscope so electron microscopes are used instead.


title: Marine life

text: Viruses are found wherever there is life and have probably existed since living cells first evolved. The origin of viruses is unclear because they do not form fossils, so molecular techniques have been used to compare the DNA or RNA of viruses and are a useful means of investigating how they arise.


title: Marine life

text: Viruses are now recognised as ancient and as having origins that pre-date the divergence of life into the three domains. But the origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are unclear: some may have evolved from plasmids—pieces of DNA that can move between cells—while others may have evolved from bacteria. In evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity.


title: Marine life

text: Opinions differ on whether viruses are a form of life or organic structures that interact with living organisms. They are considered by some to be a life form, because they carry genetic material, reproduce by creating multiple copies of themselves through self-assembly, and evolve through natural selection. However they lack key characteristics such as a cellular structure generally considered necessary to count as life. Because they possess some but not all such qualities, viruses have been described as replicators and as "organisms at the edge of life".


title: Marine life

text: Bacteriophages, often just called "phages", are viruses that parasite bacteria and archaea. Marine phages parasite marine bacteria and archaea, such as cyanobacteria. They are a common and diverse group of viruses and are the most abundant biological entity in marine environments, because their hosts, bacteria, are typically the numerically dominant cellular life in the sea. Generally there are about 1 million to 10 million viruses in each mL of seawater, or about ten times more double-stranded DNA viruses than there are cellular organisms, although estimates of viral abundance in seawater can vary over a wide range. Tailed bacteriophages appear to dominate marine ecosystems in number and diversity of organisms. Bacteriophages belonging to the families Corticoviridae, Inoviridae and Microviridae are also known to infect diverse marine bacteria.


title: Marine life

text: Microorganisms make up about 70% of the marine biomass. It is estimated viruses kill 20% of this biomass each day and that there are 15 times as many viruses in the oceans as there are bacteria and archaea. Viruses are the main agents responsible for the rapid destruction of harmful algal blooms, which often kill other marine life.


title: Marine life

text: The number of viruses in the oceans decreases further offshore and deeper into the water, where there are fewer host organisms.


title: Marine life

text: There are also archaeal viruses which replicate within archaea: these are double-stranded DNA viruses with unusual and sometimes unique shapes. These viruses have been studied in most detail in the thermophilic archaea, particularly the orders Sulfolobales and Thermoproteales.


title: Marine life

text: Viruses are an important natural means of transferring genes between different species, which increases genetic diversity and drives evolution. It is thought that viruses played a central role in the early evolution, before the diversification of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, at the time of the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth. Viruses are still one of the largest reservoirs of unexplored genetic diversity on Earth.


title: Marine life

text: Bacteria constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a number of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals. Bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep portions of Earth's crust. Bacteria also live in symbiotic and parasitic relationships with plants and animals.


title: Marine life

text: Once regarded as plants constituting the class "Schizomycetes", bacteria are now classified as prokaryotes. Unlike cells of animals and other eukaryotes, bacterial cells do not contain a nucleus and rarely harbour membrane-bound organelles. Although the term "bacteria" traditionally included all prokaryotes, the scientific classification changed after the discovery in the 1990s that prokaryotes consist of two very different groups of organisms that evolved from an ancient common ancestor. These evolutionary domains are called "Bacteria" and "Archaea".


title: Marine life

text: The ancestors of modern bacteria were unicellular microorganisms that were the first forms of life to appear on Earth, about 4 billion years ago. For about 3 billion years, most organisms were microscopic, and bacteria and archaea were the dominant forms of life. Although bacterial fossils exist, such as stromatolites, their lack of distinctive morphology prevents them from being used to examine the history of bacterial evolution, or to date the time of origin of a particular bacterial species. However, gene sequences can be used to reconstruct the bacterial phylogeny, and these studies indicate that bacteria diverged first from the archaeal/eukaryotic lineage.


title: Marine life

text: Bacteria were also involved in the second great evolutionary divergence, that of the archaea and eukaryotes. Here, eukaryotes resulted from the entering of ancient bacteria into endosymbiotic associations with the ancestors of eukaryotic cells, which were themselves possibly related to the Archaea. This involved the engulfment by proto-eukaryotic cells of alphaproteobacterial symbionts to form either mitochondria or hydrogenosomes, which are still found in all known Eukarya. Later on, some eukaryotes that already contained mitochondria also engulfed cyanobacterial-like organisms. This led to the formation of chloroplasts in algae and plants. There are also some algae that originated from even later endosymbiotic events. Here, eukaryotes engulfed a eukaryotic algae that developed into a "second-generation" plastid. This is known as secondary endosymbiosis.


title: Marine life

text: The largest known bacterium, the marine "Thiomargarita namibiensis", can be visible to the naked eye and sometimes attains .


title: Marine life

text: The archaea (Greek for "ancient") constitute a domain and kingdom of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes are prokaryotes, meaning they have no cell nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles in their cells.


title: Marine life

text: Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, but this classification is outdated. Archaeal cells have unique properties separating them from the other two domains of life, Bacteria and Eukaryota. The Archaea are further divided into multiple recognized phyla. Classification is difficult because the majority have not been isolated in the laboratory and have only been detected by analysis of their nucleic acids in samples from their environment.


title: Marine life

text: Archaea and bacteria are generally similar in size and shape, although a few archaea have very strange shapes, such as the flat and square-shaped cells of "Haloquadratum walsbyi". Despite this morphological similarity to bacteria, archaea possess genes and several metabolic pathways that are more closely related to those of eukaryotes, notably the enzymes involved in transcription and translation. Other aspects of archaeal biochemistry are unique, such as their reliance on ether lipids in their cell membranes, such as archaeols. Archaea use more energy sources than eukaryotes: these range from organic compounds, such as sugars, to ammonia, metal ions or even hydrogen gas. Salt-tolerant archaea (the Haloarchaea) use sunlight as an energy source, and other species of archaea fix carbon; however, unlike plants and cyanobacteria, no known species of archaea does both. Archaea reproduce asexually by binary fission, fragmentation, or budding; unlike bacteria and eukaryotes, no known species forms spores.


title: Marine life

text: Archaea are particularly numerous in the oceans, and the archaea in plankton may be one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet. Archaea are a major part of Earth's life and may play roles in both the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle.


title: Marine life

text: Protists are eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are usually single-celled and microscopic. Life originated as single-celled prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. The term protist came into use historically as a term of convenience for eukaryotes that cannot be strictly classified as plants, animals or fungi. They are not a part of modern cladistics, because they are paraphyletic (lacking a common ancestor). Protists can be broadly divided into four groups depending on whether their nutrition is plant-like, animal-like, fungus-like, or a mixture of these.


title: Marine life

text: Protists are highly diverse organisms currently organised into 18 phyla, but are not easy to classify. Studies have shown high protist diversity exists in oceans, deep sea-vents and river sediments, suggesting a large number of eukaryotic microbial communities have yet to be discovered. There has been little research on mixotrophic protists, but recent studies in marine environments found mixotrophic protests contribute a significant part of the protist biomass.


title: Marine life

text: In contrast to the cells of prokaryotes, the cells of eukaryotes are highly organised. Plants, animals and fungi are usually multi-celled and are typically macroscopic. Most protists are single-celled and microscopic. But there are exceptions. Some single-celled marine protists are macroscopic. Some marine slime molds have unique life cycles that involve switching between unicellular, colonial, and multicellular forms. Other marine protist are neither single-celled nor microscopic, such as seaweed.


title: Marine life

text: Protists have been described as a taxonomic grab bag where anything that doesn't fit into one of the main biological kingdoms can be placed. Some modern authors prefer to exclude multicellular organisms from the traditional definition of a protist, restricting protists to unicellular organisms. This more constrained definition excludes seaweeds and slime molds.


title: Marine life

text: As juveniles, animals develop from microscopic stages, which can include spores, eggs and larvae. At least one microscopic animal group, the parasitic cnidarian Myxozoa, is unicellular in its adult form, and includes marine species. Other adult marine microanimals are multicellular. Microscopic adult arthropods are more commonly found inland in freshwater, but there are marine species as well. Microscopic adult marine crustaceans include some copepods, cladocera and tardigrades (water bears). Some marine nematodes and rotifers are also too small to be recognised with the naked eye, as are many loricifera, including the recently discovered anaerobic species that spend their lives in an anoxic environment. Copepods contribute more to the secondary productivity and carbon sink of the world oceans than any other group of organisms. While mites are not normally thought of as marine organisms, most species of the family Halacaridae live in the sea.


title: Marine life

text: Over 1500 species of fungi are known from marine environments. These are parasitic on marine algae or animals, or are saprobes feeding on dead organic matter from algae, corals, protozoan cysts, sea grasses, wood and other substrata. Spores of many species have special appendages which facilitate attachment to the substratum. Marine fungi can also be found in sea foam and around hydrothermal areas of the ocean. A diverse range of unusual secondary metabolites is produced by marine fungi.


title: Marine life

text: Mycoplankton are saprotropic members of the plankton communities of marine and freshwater ecosystems. They are composed of filamentous free-living fungi and yeasts associated with planktonic particles or phytoplankton. Similar to bacterioplankton, these aquatic fungi play a significant role in heterotrophic mineralization and nutrient cycling. Mycoplankton can be up to 20 mm in diameter and over 50 mm in length.


title: Marine life

text: A typical milliliter of seawater contains about 10 to 10 fungal cells. This number is greater in coastal ecosystems and estuaries due to nutritional runoff from terrestrial communities. A higher diversity of mycoplankton is found around coasts and in surface waters down to 1000 metres, with a vertical profile that depends on how abundant phytoplankton is. This profile changes between seasons due to changes in nutrient availability. Marine fungi survive in a constant oxygen deficient environment, and therefore depend on oxygen diffusion by turbulence and oxygen generated by photosynthetic organisms.


title: Marine life

text: Lichens are mutualistic associations between a fungus, usually an ascomycete, and an alga or a cyanobacterium. Several lichens are found in marine environments. Many more occur in the splash zone, where they occupy different vertical zones depending on how tolerant they are to submersion. Some lichens live a long time; one species has been dated at 8,600 years. However their lifespan is difficult to measure because what defines the same lichen is not precise. Lichens grow by vegetatively breaking off a piece, which may or may not be defined as the same lichen, and two lichens of different ages can merge, raising the issue of whether it is the same lichen.


title: Marine life

text: The sea snail "Littoraria irrorata" damages plants of "Spartina" in the sea marshes where it lives, which enables spores of intertidal ascomycetous fungi to colonise the plant. The snail then eats the fungal growth in preference to the grass itself.


title: Marine life

text: According to fossil records, fungi date back to the late Proterozoic era 900-570 million years ago. Fossil marine lichens 600 million years old have been discovered in China. It has been hypothesized that mycoplankton evolved from terrestrial fungi, likely in the Paleozoic era (390 million years ago).


title: Marine life

text: The earliest animals were marine invertebrates, that is, vertebrates came later. Animals are multicellular eukaryotes, and are distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. Marine invertebrates are animals that inhabit a marine environment apart from the vertebrate members of the chordate phylum; invertebrates lack a vertebral column. Some have evolved a shell or a hard exoskeleton.


title: Marine life

text: The earliest animal fossils may belong to the genus "Dickinsonia", 571 million to 541 million years ago. Individual "Dickinsonia" typically resemble a bilaterally symmetrical ribbed oval. They kept growing until they were covered with sediment or otherwise killed, and spent most of their lives with their bodies firmly anchored to the sediment. Their taxonomic affinities are presently unknown, but their mode of growth is consistent with a bilaterian affinity.


title: Marine life

text: Apart from "Dickinsonia", the earliest widely accepted animal fossils are the rather modern-looking cnidarians (the group that includes coral, jellyfish, sea anemones and "Hydra"), possibly from around The Ediacara biota, which flourished for the last 40 million years before the start of the Cambrian, were the first animals more than a very few centimetres long. Like "Dickinsonia", many were flat with a "quilted" appearance, and seemed so strange that there was a proposal to classify them as a separate kingdom, Vendozoa. Others, however, have been interpreted as early molluscs ("Kimberella"), echinoderms ("Arkarua"), and arthropods ("Spriggina", "Parvancorina"). There is still debate about the classification of these specimens, mainly because the diagnostic features which allow taxonomists to classify more recent organisms, such as similarities to living organisms, are generally absent in the Ediacarans. However, there seems little doubt that "Kimberella" was at least a triploblastic bilaterian animal, in other words, an animal significantly more complex than the cnidarians.


title: Marine life

text: Small shelly fauna are a very mixed collection of fossils found between the Late Ediacaran and Middle Cambrian periods. The earliest, "Cloudina", shows signs of successful defense against predation and may indicate the start of an evolutionary arms race. Some tiny Early Cambrian shells almost certainly belonged to molluscs, while the owners of some "armor plates," "Halkieria" and "Microdictyon", were eventually identified when more complete specimens were found in Cambrian lagerstätten that preserved soft-bodied animals.


title: Marine life

text: Invertebrates are grouped into different phyla. Informally phyla can be thought of as a way of grouping organisms according to their body plan. A body plan refers to a blueprint which describes the shape or morphology of an organism, such as its symmetry, segmentation and the disposition of its appendages. The idea of body plans originated with vertebrates, which were grouped into one phylum. But the vertebrate body plan is only one of many, and invertebrates consist of many phyla or body plans. The history of the discovery of body plans can be seen as a movement from a worldview centred on vertebrates, to seeing the vertebrates as one body plan among many. Among the pioneering zoologists, Linnaeus identified two body plans outside the vertebrates; Cuvier identified three; and Haeckel had four, as well as the Protista with eight more, for a total of twelve. For comparison, the number of phyla recognised by modern zoologists has risen to 35.


title: Marine life

text: Historically body plans were thought of as having evolved rapidly during the Cambrian explosion, but a more nuanced understanding of animal evolution suggests a gradual development of body plans throughout the early Palaeozoic and beyond. More generally a phylum can be defined in two ways: as described above, as a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity (the phenetic definition), or a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition).


title: Marine life

text: In the 1970s there was already a debate about whether the emergence of the modern phyla was "explosive" or gradual but hidden by the shortage of Precambrian animal fossils. A re-analysis of fossils from the Burgess Shale lagerstätte increased interest in the issue when it revealed animals, such as "Opabinia", which did not fit into any known phylum. At the time these were interpreted as evidence that the modern phyla had evolved very rapidly in the Cambrian explosion and that the Burgess Shale's "weird wonders" showed that the Early Cambrian was a uniquely experimental period of animal evolution. Later discoveries of similar animals and the development of new theoretical approaches led to the conclusion that many of the "weird wonders" were evolutionary "aunts" or "cousins" of modern groups—for example that "Opabinia" was a member of the lobopods, a group which includes the ancestors of the arthropods, and that it may have been closely related to the modern tardigrades. Nevertheless, there is still much debate about whether the Cambrian explosion was really explosive and, if so, how and why it happened and why it appears unique in the history of animals.


title: Marine life

text: The deepest-branching animals — the earliest animals that appeared during evolution — are marine non-vertebrate organisms. The earliest animal phyla are the Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa and Cnidaria. No member of these clades exhibit body plans with bilateral symmetry.


title: Marine life

text: Sponges are animals of the phylum Porifera (from Modern Latin for "bearing pores"). They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them, consisting of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. They have unspecialized cells that can transform into other types and that often migrate between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems. Instead, most rely on maintaining a constant water flow through their bodies to obtain food and oxygen and to remove wastes.


title: Marine life

text: Sponges are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular, heterotrophic, lack cell walls and produce sperm cells. Unlike other animals, they lack true tissues and organs, and have no body symmetry. The shapes of their bodies are adapted for maximal efficiency of water flow through the central cavity, where it deposits nutrients, and leaves through a hole called the osculum. Many sponges have internal skeletons of spongin and/or spicules of calcium carbonate or silicon dioxide. All sponges are sessile aquatic animals. Although there are freshwater species, the great majority are marine (salt water) species, ranging from tidal zones to depths exceeding . Some sponges live to great ages; there is evidence of the deep-sea glass sponge "Monorhaphis chuni" living about 11,000 years.


title: Marine life

text: While most of the approximately 5,000–10,000 known species feed on bacteria and other food particles in the water, some host photosynthesizing micro-organisms as endosymbionts and these alliances often produce more food and oxygen than they consume. A few species of sponge that live in food-poor environments have become carnivores that prey mainly on small crustaceans.


title: Marine life

text: Linnaeus mistakenly identified sponges as plants in the order Algae. For a long time thereafter sponges were assigned to a separate subkingdom, Parazoa (meaning "beside the animals"). They are now classified as a paraphyletic phylum from which the higher animals have evolved.


title: Marine life

text: Ctenophores (from Greek for "carrying a comb"), commonly known as comb jellies, are a phylum that live worldwide in marine waters. They are the largest non-colonial animals to swim with the help of cilia (hairs or combs). Coastal species need to be tough enough to withstand waves and swirling sediment, but some oceanic species are so fragile and transparent that it is very difficult to capture them intact for study. In the past ctenophores were thought to have only a modest presence in the ocean, but it is now known they are often significant and even dominant parts of the planktonic biomass.


title: Marine life

text: The phylum has about 150 known species with a wide range of body forms. Sizes range from a few millimeters to . Cydippids are egg-shaped with their cilia arranged in eight radial comb rows, and deploy retractable tentacles for capturing prey. The benthic platyctenids are generally combless and flat. The coastal beroids have gaping mouths and lack tentacles. Most adult ctenophores prey on microscopic larvae and rotifers and small crustaceans but beroids prey on other ctenophores.


title: Marine life

text: Early writers combined ctenophores with cnidarians. Ctenophores resemble cnidarians in relying on water flow through the body cavity for both digestion and respiration, as well as in having a decentralized nerve net rather than a brain. Also like cnidarians, the bodies of ctenophores consist of a mass of jelly, with one layer of cells on the outside and another lining the internal cavity. In ctenophores, however, these layers are two cells deep, while those in cnidarians are only a single cell deep. While cnidarians exhibit radial symmetry, ctenophores have two anal canals which exhibit biradial symmetry (half-turn rotational symmetry). The position of the ctenophores in the evolutionary family tree of animals has long been debated, and the majority view at present, based on molecular phylogenetics, is that cnidarians and bilaterians are more closely related to each other than either is to ctenophores.


title: Marine life

text: Placozoa (from Greek for "flat animals") have the simplest structure of all animals. They are a basal form of free-living (non-parasitic) multicellular organism that do not yet have a common name. They live in marine environments and form a phylum containing sofar only three described species, of which the first, the classical "Trichoplax adhaerens", was discovered in 1883. Two more species have been discovered since 2017, and genetic methods indicate this phylum has a further 100 to 200 undescribed species.


title: Marine life

text: "Trichoplax" is a small, flattened, animal about one mm across and usually about 25 µm thick. Like the amoebae they superficially resemble, they continually change their external shape. In addition, spherical phases occasionally form which may facilitate movement. "Trichoplax" lacks tissues and organs. There is no manifest body symmetry, so it is not possible to distinguish anterior from posterior or left from right. It is made up of a few thousand cells of six types in three distinct layers. The outer layer of simple epithelial cells bear cilia which the animal uses to help it creep along the seafloor. "Trichoplax" feed by engulfing and absorbing food particles – mainly microbes and organic detritus – with their underside.


title: Marine life

text: Cnidarians (from Greek for "nettle") are distinguished by the presence of stinging cells, specialized cells that they use mainly for capturing prey. Cnidarians include corals, sea anemones, jellyfish and hydrozoans. They form a phylum containing over 10,000 species of animals found exclusively in aquatic (mainly marine) environments. Their bodies consist of mesoglea, a non-living jelly-like substance, sandwiched between two layers of epithelium that are mostly one cell thick. They have two basic body forms: swimming medusae and sessile polyps, both of which are radially symmetrical with mouths surrounded by tentacles that bear cnidocytes. Both forms have a single orifice and body cavity that are used for digestion and respiration.


title: Marine life

text: Fossil cnidarians have been found in rocks formed about . Fossils of cnidarians that do not build mineralized structures are rare. Scientists currently think cnidarians, ctenophores and bilaterians are more closely related to calcareous sponges than these are to other sponges, and that anthozoans are the evolutionary "aunts" or "sisters" of other cnidarians, and the most closely related to bilaterians.


title: Marine life

text: Cnidarians are the simplest animals in which the cells are organised into tissues. The starlet sea anemone is used as a model organism in research. It is easy to care for in the laboratory and a protocol has been developed which can yield large numbers of embryos on a daily basis. There is a remarkable degree of similarity in the gene sequence conservation and complexity between the sea anemone and vertebrates. In particular, genes concerned in the formation of the head in vertebrates are also present in the anemone.


title: Marine life

text: Some of the earliest bilaterians were wormlike, and the original bilaterian may have been a bottom dwelling worm with a single body opening. A bilaterian body can be conceptualized as a cylinder with a gut running between two openings, the mouth and the anus. Around the gut it has an internal body cavity, a coelom or pseudocoelom. Animals with this bilaterally symmetric body plan have a head (anterior) end and a tail (posterior) end as well as a back (dorsal) and a belly (ventral); therefore they also have a left side and a right side.


title: Marine life

text: Having a front end means that this part of the body encounters stimuli, such as food, favouring cephalisation, the development of a head with sense organs and a mouth. The body stretches back from the head, and many bilaterians have a combination of circular muscles that constrict the body, making it longer, and an opposing set of longitudinal muscles, that shorten the body; these enable soft-bodied animals with a hydrostatic skeleton to move by peristalsis. They also have a gut that extends through the basically cylindrical body from mouth to anus. Many bilaterian phyla have primary larvae which swim with cilia and have an apical organ containing sensory cells. However, there are exceptions to each of these characteristics; for example, adult echinoderms are radially symmetric (unlike their larvae), and certain parasitic worms have extremely simplified body structures.


title: Marine life

text: Protostomes (from Greek for "first mouth") are a superphylum of animals. It is a sister clade of the deuterostomes (from Greek for "second mouth"), with which it forms the Nephrozoa clade. Protostomes are distinguished from deuterostomes by the way their embryos develop. In protostomes the first opening that develops becomes the mouth, while in deuterostomes it becomes the anus.


title: Marine life

text: Worms (Old English for "serpents") form a number of phyla. Different groups of marine worms are related only distantly, so they are found in several different phyla such as the Annelida (segmented worms), Chaetognatha (arrow worms), Phoronida (horseshoe worms), and Hemichordata. All worms, apart from the Hemichordata, are protostomes. The Hemichordata are


title: Marine life

text: The typical body plan of a worm involves long cylindrical tube-like bodies and no limbs. Marine worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for some marine polychaete worms (bristle worms) and up to for the marine nemertean worm (bootlace worm). Some marine worms occupy a small variety of parasitic niches, living inside the bodies of other animals, while others live more freely in the marine environment or by burrowing underground. Many of these worms have specialized tentacles used for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide and also may be used for reproduction. Some marine worms are tube worms, such as the giant tube worm which lives in waters near underwater volcanoes and can withstand temperatures up to 90 degrees Celsius. Platyhelminthes (flatworms) form another worm phylum which includes a class of parasitic tapeworms. The marine tapeworm "Polygonoporus giganticus", found in the gut of sperm whales, can grow to over 30 m (100 ft).


title: Marine life

text: Nematodes (roundworms) constitute a further worm phylum with tubular digestive systems and an opening at both ends. Over 25,000 nematode species have been described, of which more than half are parasitic. It has been estimated another million remain undescribed. They are ubiquitous in marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments, where they often outnumber other animals in both individual and species counts. They are found in every part of the earth's lithosphere, from the top of mountains to the bottom of oceanic trenches. By count they represent 90% of all animals on the ocean floor. Their numerical dominance, often exceeding a million individuals per square meter and accounting for about 80% of all individual animals on earth, their diversity of life cycles, and their presence at various trophic levels point at an important role in many ecosystems.


title: Marine life

text: Molluscs (Latin for "soft") form a phylum with about 85,000 extant recognized species. They are the largest marine phylum in terms of species count, containing about 23% of all the named marine organisms. Molluscs have more varied forms than other invertebrate phyla. They are highly diverse, not just in size and in anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and in habitat.


title: Marine life

text: The mollusc phylum is divided into 9 or 10 taxonomic classes. These classes include gastropods, bivalves and cephalopods, as well as other lesser-known but distinctive classes. Gastropods with protective shells are referred to as snails, whereas gastropods without protective shells are referred to as slugs. Gastropods are by far the most numerous molluscs in terms of species. Bivalves include clams, oysters, cockles, mussels, scallops, and numerous other families. There are about 8,000 marine bivalves species (including brackish water and estuarine species). A deep sea ocean quahog clam has been reported as having lived 507 years making it the longest recorded life of all animals apart from colonial animals, or near-colonial animals like sponges.


title: Marine life

text: Cephalopods include octopus, squid and cuttlefish. About 800 living species of marine cephalopods have been identified, and an estimated 11,000 extinct taxa have been described. They are found in all oceans, but there are no fully freshwater cephalopods.


title: Marine life

text: Molluscs have such diverse shapes that many textbooks base their descriptions of molluscan anatomy on a generalized or "hypothetical ancestral mollusc". This generalized mollusc is unsegmented and bilaterally symmetrical with an underside consisting of a single muscular foot. Beyond that it has three further key features. Firstly, it has a muscular cloak called a mantle covering its viscera and containing a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion. A shell secreted by the mantle covers the upper surface. Secondly (apart from bivalves) it has a rasping tongue called a radula used for feeding. Thirdly, it has a nervous system including a complex digestive system using microscopic, muscle-powered hairs called cilia to exude mucus. The generalized mollusc has two paired nerve cords (three in bivalves). The brain, in species that have one, encircles the esophagus. Most molluscs have eyes and all have sensors detecting chemicals, vibrations, and touch.


title: Marine life

text: Good evidence exists for the appearance of marine gastropods, cephalopods and bivalves in the Cambrian period .


title: Marine life

text: Arthropods (Greek for "jointed feet") have an exoskeleton (external skeleton), a segmented body, and jointed appendages (paired appendages). They form a phylum which includes insects, arachnids, myriapods, and crustaceans. Arthropods are characterized by their jointed limbs and cuticle made of chitin, often mineralised with calcium carbonate. The arthropod body plan consists of segments, each with a pair of appendages. The rigid cuticle inhibits growth, so arthropods replace it periodically by moulting. Their versatility has enabled them to become the most species-rich members of all ecological guilds in most environments.


title: Marine life

text: The evolutionary ancestry of arthropods dates back to the Cambrian period and is generally regarded as monophyletic. However, basal relationships of arthropods with extinct phyla such as lobopodians have recently been debated.


title: Marine life

text: Extant marine arthropods range in size from the microscopic crustacean "Stygotantulus" to the Japanese spider crab. Arthropods' primary internal cavity is a hemocoel, which accommodates their internal organs, and through which their haemolymph - analogue of blood - circulates; they have open circulatory systems. 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.


title: Marine life

text: Arthropod vision relies on various combinations of compound eyes and pigment-pit ocelli: in most species the ocelli can only detect the direction from which light is coming, and the compound eyes are the main source of information. Arthropods also have a wide range of chemical and mechanical sensors, mostly based on modifications of the many setae (bristles) that project through their cuticles. Arthropod methods of reproduction are diverse: terrestrial species use some form of internal fertilization while marine species lay eggs using either internal or external fertilization. Arthropod hatchlings vary from miniature adults to grubs that lack jointed limbs and eventually undergo a total metamorphosis to produce the adult form.


title: Marine life

text: In deuterostomes the first opening that develops in the growing embryo becomes the anus, while in protostomes it becomes the mouth. Deuterostomes form a superphylum of animals and are the sister clade of the protostomes. It is once considered that the earliest known deuterostomes are "Saccorhytus" fossils from about 540 million years ago. However, another study considered that "Saccorhytus" is more likely to be a ecdysozoan.


title: Marine life

text: Echinoderms (Greek for "spiny skin") is a phylum which contains only marine invertebrates. The phylum contains about 7000 living species, making it the second-largest grouping of deuterostomes, after the chordates.


title: Marine life

text: Adult echinoderms are recognizable by their radial symmetry (usually five-point) and include starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the sea lilies. Echinoderms are found at every ocean depth, from the intertidal zone to the abyssal zone. They are unique among animals in having bilateral symmetry at the larval stage, but fivefold symmetry (pentamerism, a special type of radial symmetry) as adults.


title: Marine life

text: Echinoderms are important both biologically and geologically. Biologically, there are few other groupings so abundant in the biotic desert of the deep sea, as well as shallower oceans. Most echinoderms are able to regenerate tissue, organs, limbs, and reproduce asexually; in some cases, they can undergo complete regeneration from a single limb. Geologically, the value of echinoderms is in their ossified skeletons, which are major contributors to many limestone formations, and can provide valuable clues as to the geological environment. They were the most used species in regenerative research in the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Marine life

text: It is held by some scientists that the radiation of echinoderms was responsible for the Mesozoic Marine Revolution. Aside from the hard-to-classify "Arkarua" (a Precambrian animal with echinoderm-like pentamerous radial symmetry), the first definitive members of the phylum appeared near the start of the Cambrian.


title: Marine life

text: Hemichordates form a sister phylum to the echinoderms. They are solitary worm-shaped organisms rarely seen by humans because of their lifestyle. They include two main groups, the acorn worms and the Pterobranchia. Pterobranchia form a class containing about 30 species of small worm-shaped animals that live in secreted tubes on the ocean floor. Acorn worms form a class containing about 111 species that generally live in U-shaped burrows on the seabed, from the shoreline to a depth of 3000 metres. The worms lie there with the proboscis sticking out of one opening in the burrow, subsisting as deposit feeders or suspension feeders. It is supposed the ancestors of acorn worms used to live in tubes like their relatives, the Pterobranchia, but eventually started to live a safer and more sheltered existence in sediment burrows. Some of these worms may grow to be very long; one particular species may reach a length of 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in), although most acorn worms are much smaller.


title: Marine life

text: Acorn worms are more highly specialised and advanced than other worm-like organisms. They have a circulatory system with a heart that also functions as a kidney. Acorn worms have gill-like structures they use for breathing, similar to the gills of fish. Therefore, acorn worms are sometimes said to be a link between classical invertebrates and vertebrates. Acorn worms continually form new gill slits as they grow in size, and some older individuals have more than a hundred on each side. Each slit consists of a branchial chamber opening to the pharynx through a U-shaped cleft. Cilia push water through the slits, maintaining a constant flow, just as in fish. Some acorn worms also have a postanal tail which may be homologous to the post-anal tail of vertebrates.


title: Marine life

text: The three-section body plan of the acorn worm is no longer present in the vertebrates, except in the anatomy of the frontal neural tube, later developed into a brain divided into three parts. This means some of the original anatomy of the early chordate ancestors is still present in vertebrates even if it is not always visible. One theory is the three-part body originated from an early common ancestor of the deuterostomes, and maybe even from a common bilateral ancestor of both deuterostomes and protostomes. Studies have shown the gene expression in the embryo share three of the same signaling centers that shape the brains of all vertebrates, but instead of taking part in the formation of their neural system, they are controlling the development of the different body regions.


title: Marine life

text: The chordate phylum has three subphyla, one of which is the vertebrates (see below). The other two subphyla are marine invertebrates: the tunicates (salps and sea squirts) and the cephalochordates (such as lancelets). Invertebrate chordates are close relatives to vertebrates. In particular, there has been discussion about how closely some extinct marine species, such as Pikaiidae, Palaeospondylus, Zhongxiniscus and Vetulicolia, might relate ancestrally to vertebrates.


title: Marine life

text: Vertebrates (Latin for "joints of the spine") are a subphylum of chordates. They are chordates that have a vertebral column (backbone). The vertebral column provides the central support structure for an internal skeleton which gives shape, support, and protection to the body and can provide a means of anchoring fins or limbs to the body. The vertebral column also serves to house and protect the spinal cord that lies within the vertebral column.


title: Marine life

text: Fish typically breathe by extracting oxygen from water through gills and have a skin protected by scales and mucous. They use fins to propel and stabilise themselves in the water, and usually have a two-chambered heart and eyes well adapted to seeing underwater, as well as other sensory systems. Over 33,000 species of fish have been described as of 2017, of which about 20,000 are marine fish.


title: Marine life

text: Early fish had no jaws. Most went extinct when they were outcompeted by jawed fish (below), but two groups survived: hagfish and lampreys. Hagfish form a class of about 20 species of eel-shaped, slime-producing marine fish. They are the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebral column. Lampreys form a superclass containing 38 known extant species of jawless fish. The adult lamprey is characterized by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. Although they are well known for boring into the flesh of other fish to suck their blood, only 18 species of lampreys are actually parasitic. Together hagfish and lampreys are the sister group to vertebrates. Living hagfish remain similar to hagfish from around 300 million years ago. The lampreys are a very ancient lineage of vertebrates, though their exact relationship to hagfishes and jawed vertebrates is still a matter of dispute. Molecular analysis since 1992 has suggested that hagfish are most closely related to lampreys, and so also are vertebrates in a monophyletic sense. Others consider them a sister group of vertebrates in the common taxon of craniata.


title: Marine life

text: The Tully monster is an extinct genus of soft-bodied bilaterians that lived in tropical estuaries about 300 million years ago. Since 2016 there has been controversy over whether this animal was a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In 2020 researchers found "strong evidence" that the Tully monster was a vertebrate, and was a jawless fish in the lineage of the lamprey.


title: Marine life

text: Pteraspidomorphi is an extinct class of early jawless fish ancestral to jawed vertebrates. The few characteristics they share with the latter are now considered as primitive for all vertebrates.


title: Marine life

text: Around the start of the Devonian, fish started appearing with a deep remodelling of the vertebrate skull that resulted in a jaw.


title: Marine life

text: All vertebrate jaws, including the human jaw, have evolved from these early fish jaws. The appearance of the early vertebrate jaw has been described as "perhaps the most profound and radical evolutionary step in vertebrate history". Jaws make it possible to capture, hold, and chew prey. Fish without jaws had more difficulty surviving than fish with jaws, and most jawless fish became extinct during the Triassic period.


title: Marine life

text: Jawed fish fall into two main groups: fish with bony internal skeletons and fish with cartilaginous internal skeletons. Cartilaginous fish, such as sharks and rays, have jaws and skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone. Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived about 28 to 1.5 Ma. It looked much like a stocky version of the great white shark, but was much larger with fossil lengths reaching . Found in all oceans it was one of the largest and most powerful predators in vertebrate history, and probably had a profound impact on marine life. The Greenland shark has the longest known lifespan of all vertebrates, about 400 years. Some sharks such as the great white are partially warm blooded and give live birth. The manta ray, largest ray in the world, has been targeted by fisheries and is now vulnerable.


title: Marine life

text: Bony fish have jaws and skeletons made of bone rather than cartilage. Bony fish also have hard, bony plates called operculum which help them respire and protect their gills, and they often possess a swim bladder which they use for better control of their buoyancy. Bony fish can be further divided into those with lobe fins and those with ray fins. The approximate dates in the phylogenetic tree are from Near et al., 2012 and Zhu et al., 2009.


title: Marine life

text: Lobe fins have the form of fleshy lobes supported by bony stalks which extend from the body. "Guiyu oneiros", the earliest-known bony fish, lived during the Late Silurian 419 million years ago. It has the combination of both ray-finned and lobe-finned features, although analysis of the totality of its features place it closer to lobe-finned fish. Lobe fins evolved into the legs of the first tetrapod land vertebrates, so by extension an early ancestor of humans was a lobe-finned fish. Apart from the coelacanths and the lungfishes, lobe-finned fishes are now extinct.


title: Marine life

text: The remaining bony fish have ray fins. These are made of webs of skin supported by bony or horny spines (rays) which can be erected to control the fin stiffness.


title: Marine life

text: About 96% of all modern fish species are teleosts, of which about 14,000 are marine species. Teleosts can be distinguished from other bony fish by their possession of a homocercal tail, a tail where the upper half mirrors the lower half. Another difference lies in their jaw bones – teleosts have modifications in the jaw musculature which make it possible for them to protrude their jaws. This enables them to grab prey and draw it into their mouth. In general, teleosts tend to be quicker and more flexible than more basal bony fishes. Their skeletal structure has evolved towards greater lightness. While teleost bones are well calcified, they are constructed from a scaffolding of struts, rather than the dense cancellous bones of holostean fish.


title: Marine life

text: Teleosts are found in almost all marine habitats. They have enormous diversity, and range in size from adult gobies 8mm long to ocean sunfish weighting over 2,000 kg. The following images show something of the diversity in the shape and colour of modern marine teleosts...


title: Marine life

text: A tetrapod (Greek for "four feet") is a vertebrate with limbs (feet). Tetrapods evolved from ancient lobe-finned fishes about 400 million years ago during the Devonian Period when their earliest ancestors emerged from the sea and adapted to living on land. This change from a body plan for breathing and navigating in gravity-neutral water to a body plan with mechanisms enabling the animal to breath in air without dehydrating and move on land is one of the most profound evolutionary changes known. Tetrapods can be divided into four classes: amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.


title: Marine life

text: Marine tetrapods are tetrapods that returned from land back to the sea again. The first returns to the ocean may have occurred as early as the Carboniferous Period whereas other returns occurred as recently as the Cenozoic, as in cetaceans, pinnipeds, and several modern amphibians. Amphibians (from Greek for "both kinds of life") live part of their life in water and part on land. They mostly require fresh water to reproduce. A few inhabit brackish water, but there are no true marine amphibians. There have been reports, however, of amphibians invading marine waters, such as a Black Sea invasion by the natural hybrid "Pelophylax esculentus" reported in 2010.


title: Marine life

text: Reptiles (Late Latin for "creeping" or "crawling") do not have an aquatic larval stage, and in this way are unlike amphibians. Most reptiles are oviparous, although several species of squamates are viviparous, as were some extinct aquatic clades — the fetus develops within the mother, contained in a placenta rather than an eggshell. As amniotes, reptile eggs are surrounded by membranes for protection and transport, which adapt them to reproduction on dry land. Many of the viviparous species feed their fetuses through various forms of placenta analogous to those of mammals, with some providing initial care for their hatchlings.


title: Marine life

text: Some reptiles are more closely related to birds than other reptiles, and many scientists prefer to make Reptilia a monophyletic group which includes the birds. Extant non-avian reptiles which inhabit or frequent the sea include sea turtles, sea snakes, terrapins, the marine iguana, and the saltwater crocodile. Currently, of the approximately 12,000 extant reptile species and sub-species, only about 100 of are classed as marine reptiles.


title: Marine life

text: Except for some sea snakes, most extant marine reptiles are oviparous and need to return to land to lay their eggs. Apart from sea turtles, the species usually spend most of their lives on or near land rather than in the ocean. Sea snakes generally prefer shallow waters nearby land, around islands, especially waters that are somewhat sheltered, as well as near estuaries. Unlike land snakes, sea snakes have evolved flattened tails which help them swim.


title: Marine life

text: Some extinct marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, evolved to be viviparous and had no requirement to return to land. Ichthyosaurs resembled dolphins. They first appeared about 245 million years ago and disappeared about 90 million years ago. The terrestrial ancestor of the ichthyosaur had no features already on its back or tail that might have helped along the evolutionary process. Yet the ichthyosaur developed a dorsal and tail fin which improved its ability to swim. The biologist Stephen Jay Gould said the ichthyosaur was his favourite example of convergent evolution. The earliest marine reptiles arose in the Permian. During the Mesozoic many groups of reptiles became adapted to life in the seas, including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, nothosaurs, placodonts, sea turtles, thalattosaurs and thalattosuchians. Marine reptiles were less numerous after mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.


title: Marine life

text: Marine birds are adapted to life within the marine environment. They are often called "seabirds". While marine birds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same environmental problems and feeding niches have resulted in similar adaptations. Examples include albatross, penguins, gannets, and auks.


title: Marine life

text: In general, marine birds live longer, breed later and have fewer young than terrestrial birds do, but they invest a great deal of time in their young. Most species nest in colonies, which can vary in size from a few dozen birds to millions. Many species are famous for undertaking long annual migrations, crossing the equator or circumnavigating the Earth in some cases. They feed both at the ocean's surface and below it, and even feed on each other. Marine birds can be highly pelagic, coastal, or in some cases spend a part of the year away from the sea entirely. Some marine birds plummet from heights, plunging through the water leaving vapour-like trails, similar to that of fighter planes. Gannets plunge into the water at up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph). They have air sacs under their skin in their face and chest which act like bubble-wrap, cushioning the impact with the water.


title: Marine life

text: The first marine birds evolved in the Cretaceous period, and modern marine bird families emerged in the Paleogene.


title: Marine life

text: Mammals (from Latin for "breast") are characterised by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young. There are about 130 living and recently extinct marine mammal species such as seals, dolphins, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They do not represent a distinct taxon or systematic grouping, but are instead unified by their reliance on the marine environment for feeding. Both cetaceans and sirenians are fully aquatic and therefore are obligate water dwellers. Seals and sea-lions are semiaquatic; they spend the majority of their time in the water, but need to return to land for important activities such as mating, breeding and molting. In contrast, both otters and the polar bear are much less adapted to aquatic living. Their diet varies considerably as well: some may eat zooplankton; others may eat fish, squid, shellfish, and sea-grass; and a few may eat other mammals.


title: Marine life

text: In a process of convergent evolution, marine mammals, especially cetaceans such as dolphins and whales, redeveloped their body plan to parallel the streamlined fusiform body plan of pelagic fish. Front legs became flippers and back legs disappeared, a dorsal fin reappeared and the tail morphed into a powerful horizontal fluke. This body plan is an adaptation to being an active predator in a high drag environment. A parallel convergence occurred with the now extinct marine reptile ichthyosaur.


title: Marine life

text: Primary producers are the autotroph organisms that make their own food instead of eating other organisms. This means primary producers become the starting point in the food chain for heterotroph organisms that do eat other organisms. Some marine primary producers are specialised bacteria and archaea which are chemotrophs, making their own food by gathering around hydrothermal vents and cold seeps and using chemosynthesis. However most marine primary production comes from organisms which use photosynthesis on the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water. This process uses energy from sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars that can be used both as a source of chemical energy and of organic molecules that are used in the structural components of cells. Marine primary producers are important because they underpin almost all marine animal life by generating most of the oxygen and food that provide other organisms with the chemical energy they need to exist.


title: Marine life

text: The principal marine primary producers are cyanobacteria, algae and marine plants. The oxygen released as a by-product of photosynthesis is needed by nearly all living things to carry out cellular respiration. In addition, primary producers are influential in the global carbon and water cycles. They stabilize coastal areas and can provide habitats for marine animals. The term division has been traditionally used instead of phylum when discussing primary producers, but the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants now accepts both terms as equivalents.


title: Marine life

text: Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to evolve an ability to turn sunlight into chemical energy. They form a phylum (division) of bacteria which range from unicellular to filamentous and include colonial species. They are found almost everywhere on earth: in damp soil, in both freshwater and marine environments, and even on Antarctic rocks. In particular, some species occur as drifting cells floating in the ocean, and as such were amongst the first of the phytoplankton.


title: Marine life

text: The first primary producers that used photosynthesis were oceanic cyanobacteria about 2.3 billion years ago. The release of molecular oxygen by cyanobacteria as a by-product of photosynthesis induced global changes in the Earth's environment. Because oxygen was toxic to most life on Earth at the time, this led to the near-extinction of oxygen-intolerant organisms, a dramatic change which redirected the evolution of the major animal and plant species.


title: Marine life

text: The tiny marine cyanobacterium "Prochlorococcus", discovered in 1986, forms today part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. It is possibly the most plentiful genus on Earth: a single millilitre of surface seawater may contain 100,000 cells or more.


title: Marine life

text: Originally, biologists classified cyanobacteria as algae, and referred to it as "blue-green algae". The more recent view is that cyanobacteria are bacteria, and hence are not even in the same Kingdom as algae. Most authorities today exclude all prokaryotes, and hence cyanobacteria from the definition of algae.


title: Marine life

text: Algae is an informal term for a widespread and diverse group of photosynthetic protists which are not necessarily closely related and are thus polyphyletic. Marine algae can be divided into six groups:


title: Marine life

text: Unlike higher plants, algae lack roots, stems, or leaves. They can be classified by size as "microalgae" or "macroalgae".


title: Marine life

text: Microalgae are the microscopic types of algae, not visible to the naked eye. They are mostly unicellular species which exist as individuals or in chains or groups, though some are multicellular. Microalgae are important components of the marine protists (discussed above), as well as the phytoplankton (discussed below). They are very diverse. It has been estimated there are 200,000-800,000 species of which about 50,000 species have been described. Depending on the species, their sizes range from a few micrometers (µm) to a few hundred micrometers. They are specially adapted to an environment dominated by viscous forces.


title: Marine life

text: Macroalgae are the larger, multicellular and more visible types of algae, commonly called seaweeds. Seaweeds usually grow in shallow coastal waters where they are anchored to the seafloor by a holdfast. Seaweed that becomes adrift can wash up on beaches. Kelp is a large brown seaweed that forms large underwater forests covering about 25% of the world coastlines. They are among the most productive and dynamic ecosystems on Earth. Some "Sargassum" seaweeds are planktonic (free-floating). Like microalgae, macroalgae (seaweeds) are technically marine protists since they are not true plants.


title: Marine life

text: Unicellular organisms are usually microscopic, less than one tenth of a millimeter long. There are exceptions. Mermaid's wineglass, a genus of subtropical green algae, is single-celled but remarkably large and complex in form with a single large nucleus, making it a model organism for studying cell biology. Another single celled algae, "Caulerpa taxifolia", has the appearance of a vascular plant including "leaves" arranged neatly up stalks like a fern. Selective breeding in aquariums to produce hardier strains resulted in an accidental release into the Mediterranean where it has become an invasive species known colloquially as "killer algae".


title: Marine life

text: Back in the Silurian, some phytoplankton evolved into red, brown and green algae. These algae then invaded the land and started evolving into the land plants we know today. Later, in the Cretaceous, some of these land plants returned to the sea as marine plants, such as mangroves and seagrasses.


title: Marine life

text: Marine plants can be found in intertidal zones and shallow waters, such as seagrasses like eelgrass and turtle grass, "Thalassia". These plants have adapted to the high salinity of the ocean environment. Plant life can also flourish in the brackish waters of estuaries, where mangroves or cordgrass or beach grass beach grass might grow.


title: Marine life

text: The total world area of mangrove forests was estimated in 2010 as (based on satellite data). The total world area of seagrass meadows is more difficult to determine, but was conservatively estimated in 2003 as .


title: Marine life

text: Mangroves and seagrasses provide important nursery habitats for marine life, acting as hiding and foraging places for larval and juvenile forms of larger fish and invertebrates.


title: Marine life

text: Plankton (from Greek for "wanderers") are a diverse group of organisms that live in the water column of large bodies of water but cannot swim against a current. As a result, they wander or drift with the currents. Plankton are defined by their ecological niche, not by any phylogenetic or taxonomic classification. They are a crucial source of food for many marine animals, from forage fish to whales. Plankton can be divided into a plant-like component and an animal component.


title: Marine life

text: Phytoplankton are the plant-like components of the plankton community ("phyto" comes from the Greek for "plant"). They are autotrophic (self-feeding), meaning they generate their own food and do not need to consume other organisms.


title: Marine life

text: Phytoplankton consist mainly of microscopic photosynthetic eukaryotes which inhabit the upper sunlit layer in all oceans. They need sunlight so they can photosynthesize. Most phytoplankton are single-celled algae, but other phytoplankton are bacteria and some are protists. Phytoplankton groups include cyanobacteria (above), diatoms, various other types of algae (red, green, brown, and yellow-green), dinoflagellates, euglenoids, coccolithophorids, cryptomonads, chrysophytes, chlorophytes, prasinophytes, and silicoflagellates. They form the base of the primary production that drives the ocean food web, and account for half of the current global primary production, more than the terrestrial forests.


title: Marine life

text: Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community ("zoo" comes from the Greek for "animal"). They are heterotrophic (other-feeding), meaning they cannot produce their own food and must consume instead other plants or animals as food. In particular, this means they eat phytoplankton.


title: Marine life

text: Zooplankton are generally larger than phytoplankton, mostly still microscopic but some can be seen with the naked eye. Many protozoans (single-celled protists that prey on other microscopic life) are zooplankton, including zooflagellates, foraminiferans, radiolarians and some dinoflagellates. Other dinoflagellates are mixotrophic and could also be classified as phytoplankton; the distinction between plants and animals often breaks down in very small organisms. Other zooplankton include pelagic cnidarians, ctenophores, molluscs, arthropods and tunicates, as well as planktonic arrow worms and bristle worms.


title: Marine life

text: Many marine animals begin life as zooplankton in the form of eggs or larvae, before they develop into adults. These are meroplanktic, that is, they are planktonic for only part of their life.


title: Marine life

text: Some dinoflagellates are bioluminescent. At night, ocean water can light up internally and sparkle with blue light because of these dinoflagellates. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates possess scintillons, individual cytoplasmic bodies which contain dinoflagellate luciferase, the main enzyme involved in the luminescence. The luminescence, sometimes called "the phosphorescence of the sea", occurs as brief (0.1 sec) blue flashes or sparks when individual scintillons are stimulated, usually by mechanical disturbances from, for example, a boat or a swimmer or surf.


title: Marine life

text: Compared to terrestrial environments, marine environments have biomass pyramids which are inverted at the base. In particular, the biomass of consumers (copepods, krill, shrimp, forage fish) is larger than the biomass of primary producers. This happens because the ocean's primary producers are tiny phytoplankton which tend to be r-strategists that grow and reproduce rapidly, so a small mass can have a fast rate of primary production. In contrast, terrestrial primary producers, such as mature forests, are often K-strategists that grow and reproduce slowly, so a much larger mass is needed to achieve the same rate of primary production.


title: Marine life

text: Because of this inversion, it is the zooplankton that make up most of the marine animal biomass. As primary consumers, they are the crucial link between the primary producers (mainly phytoplankton) and the rest of the marine food web (secondary consumers).


title: Marine life

text: If phytoplankton dies before it is eaten, it descends through the euphotic zone as part of the marine snow and settles into the depths of sea. In this way, phytoplankton sequester about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean each year, causing the ocean to become a sink of carbon dioxide holding about 90% of all sequestered carbon.


title: Marine life

text: In 2010 researchers found whales carry nutrients from the depths of the ocean back to the surface using a process they called the whale pump. Whales feed at deeper levels in the ocean where krill is found, but return regularly to the surface to breathe. There whales defecate a liquid rich in nitrogen and iron. Instead of sinking, the liquid stays at the surface where phytoplankton consume it. In the Gulf of Maine the whale pump provides more nitrogen than the rivers.


title: Marine life

text: Taken as a whole, the oceans form a single marine system where water – the "universal solvent" – dissolves nutrients and substances containing elements such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. These substances are endlessly cycled and recycled, chemically combined and then broken down again, dissolved and then precipitated or evaporated, imported from and exported back to the land and the atmosphere and the ocean floor. Powered both by the biological activity of marine organisms and by the natural actions of the sun and tides and movements within the Earth's crust, these are the marine biogeochemical cycles.


title: Marine life

text: Sediments at the bottom of the ocean have two main origins, terrigenous and biogenous. Terrigenous sediments account for about 45% of the total marine sediment, and originate in the erosion of rocks on land, transported by rivers and land runoff, windborne dust, volcanoes, or grinding by glaciers.


title: Marine life

text: Biogenous sediments account for the other 55% of the total sediment, and originate in the skeletal remains of marine protists (single-celled plankton and benthos organisms). Much smaller amounts of precipitated minerals and meteoric dust can also be present. "Ooze", in the context of a marine sediment, does not refer to the consistency of the sediment but to its biological origin. The term ooze was originally used by John Murray, the "father of modern oceanography", who proposed the term "radiolarian ooze" for the silica deposits of radiolarian shells brought to the surface during the Challenger Expedition. A "biogenic ooze" is a pelagic sediment containing at least 30 percent from the skeletal remains of marine organisms.


title: Marine life

text: Land interactions impact marine life in many ways. Coastlines typically have continental shelves extending some way from the shore. These provide extensive shallows sunlit down to the seafloor, allowing for photosynthesis and enabling habitats for seagrass meadows, coral reefs, kelp forests and other benthic life. Further from shore the continental shelf slopes towards deep water. Wind blowing at the ocean surface or deep ocean currents can result in cold and nutrient rich waters from abyssal depths moving up the continental slopes. This can result in upwellings along the outer edges of continental shelves, providing conditions for phytoplankton blooms.


title: Marine life

text: Water evaporated by the sun from the surface of the ocean can precipitate on land and eventually return to the ocean as runoff or discharge from rivers, enriched with nutrients as well as pollutants. As rivers discharge into estuaries, freshwater mixes with saltwater and becomes brackish. This provides another shallow water habitat where mangrove forests and estuarine fish thrive. Overall, life in inland lakes can evolve with greater diversity than happens in the sea, because freshwater habitats are themselves diverse and compartmentalised in a way marine habitats are not. Some aquatic life, such as salmon and eels, migrate back and forth between freshwater and marine habitats. These migrations can result in exchanges of pathogens and have impacts on the way life evolves in the ocean.


title: Marine life

text: Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, pollution, acidification and the introduction of invasive species. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.


title: Marine life

text: Biodiversity is the result of over three billion years of evolution. Until approximately 600 million years ago, all life consisted of archaea, bacteria, protozoans and similar single-celled organisms. The history of biodiversity during the Phanerozoic (the last 540 million years), starts with rapid growth during the Cambrian explosion – a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. Over the next 400 million years or so, invertebrate diversity showed little overall trend and vertebrate diversity shows an overall exponential trend.


title: Marine life

text: However, more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to be extinct. These extinctions occur at an uneven rate. The dramatic rise in diversity has been marked by periodic, massive losses of diversity classified as mass extinction events. Mass extinction events occur when life undergoes precipitous global declines. Most diversity and biomass on earth is found among the microorganisms, which are difficult to measure. Recorded extinction events are therefore based on the more easily observed changes in the diversity and abundance of larger multicellular organisms, rather than the total diversity and abundance of life. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.


title: Marine life

text: Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine animals every million years. The Great Oxygenation Event was perhaps the first major extinction event. Since the Cambrian explosion five further major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The worst was the Permian-Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago. Vertebrates took 30 million years to recover from this event. In addition to these major mass extinctions there are numerous minor ones, as well as the current ongoing mass-extinction caused by human activity, the Holocene extinction sometimes called the "sixth extinction".


title: John Frum

text: John Frum (also called Jon Frum, John Brum, and John Prum) is a mythic figure associated with cargo cults on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. He is often depicted as an American World War II serviceman who will bring wealth and prosperity to the people if they follow him. Quoting David Attenborough's report of an encounter: E look like you. 'E got white face. 'E tall man. 'E live 'long South America."


title: John Frum

text: In the 1990s, there was still reportedly over 5,000 members of the John Frum movement but today (2022) there are less than 500. Now, only the village of Lamakara remains true to the John Frum cause on the island of Tanna. The rest of the island has been mostly converted by Christian missionaries based out of Sulphur Bay.


title: John Frum

text: The religion centering on John Frum arose in the late 1930s, when Vanuatu was known as the New Hebrides, although there was a claim in 1949 that it had started in the 1910s. The movement was influenced by existing religious practice in the Sulphur Bay area of Tanna, particularly the worship of Keraperamun, a god associated with Mount Tukosmera.


title: John Frum

text: In one analysis of the cult, the figure was first known as John Broom, who was believed by followers to one day return from a distant land to sweep away the White colonials and return riches to the islands. In some versions of the story, a native man named Manehivi, using the alias "John Frum", began appearing among the native people of Tanna dressed in a Western-style coat, assuring the people he would bring them houses, clothes, food, and transport.


title: John Frum

text: Others contend that John Frum was a kava-induced spirit vision. Said to be a manifestation of Keraperamun, this John Frum promised the dawn of a new age in which all White people, including missionaries, would depart the New Hebrides, leaving behind their goods and property for the native Melanesians. For this to happen, however, the people of Tanna had to reject all aspects of European society including money, Western education, Christianity and work on copra plantations, and they had to return to traditional "kastom" (the Bislama language word for "customs").


title: John Frum

text: In 1941, followers of John Frum rid themselves of their money in a frenzy of spending, left the missionary churches, schools, villages and plantations, and moved inland to participate in traditional feasts, dances and rituals. Most followers had come from the Presbyterian church. European colonial authorities sought to suppress the movement, at one point arresting a Tannese man calling himself John Frum, humiliating him publicly, imprisoning and ultimately exiling him along with other leaders of the cult to another island in the archipelago.


title: John Frum

text: Despite this effort, the movement gained popularity in the early 1940s after 50,000 American troops were stationed in New Hebrides during World War II, bringing with them an enormous amount of supplies (or "cargo"). During the war, approximately 10,000 Ni-Vanuatu men served in the Vanuatu Labor Corps, a labor battalion of the United States Armed Forces. They provided logistical support to the Allied war effort during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The mass participation of Ni-Vanuatu men in the Labor Corps had a significant effect on the John Frum movement, giving it the characteristics of a cargo cult.


title: John Frum

text: After the war and the departure of the Americans, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American airplanes to land and bring them "cargo". Versions of the cult emphasizing the American connection interpret "John Frum" as a corruption of "John from (America)" (although it could mean "John from" anywhere not of Vanuatan origin).


title: John Frum

text: In 1957, a leader of the John Frum movement, Nakomaha, created the "Tanna Army", a non-violent ritualistic society that organised military-style parades of men with faces painted in ritual colours and wearing white T-shirts with the letters "T-A USA" (Tanna Army USA). This parade takes place every year on February 15, the date on which followers believe John Frum will return, and which is observed as "John Frum Day" in Vanuatu.


title: John Frum

text: In the late 1970s, John Frum followers opposed the imminent creation of an independent united nation of Vanuatu. They objected to a centralised government they feared would favor Western modernity and Christianity that would be detrimental to local customs. The John Frum movement has its own political party, Nagriamel led by Song Keaspai. The party celebrated its 50th anniversary on February 15, 2007. Chief Isaak Wan Nikiau, its leader, was quoted by the BBC from years past as saying that John Frum was "our God, our Jesus" and would eventually return.


title: John Frum

text: In December 2011, the president of the John Frum movement (and jointly of Nagriamel) was Thitam Goiset, a woman of Vietnamese origin and sister of businessman Dinh Van Than, despite the leadership of these movements having been "previously [...] held by high ranking male chiefs". In 2013, Thitam Goiset was sacked from her role as Vanuatu's ambassador to Russia amid evidence of corrupt activities.


title: John Frum

text: Followers of the movement continue to celebrate John Frum Day each year in February. Europeans have made claims on the prophecy of being the leader, who have gained status in Vanuatuan communities through promising to bring development and investment to the communities, such as Claude-Philippe Berger, who died in July 2021, who styled himself the "traditional king of Tanna".


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a 2019 American horror thriller film written and directed by Daniel Farrands, and starring Hilary Duff, Jonathan Bennett, Lydia Hearst, Pawel Szajda, and Ryan Cargill. The film is a fictionalized account of the 1969 Tate murders, following actress Sharon Tate (Duff) as she suffers premonitions of her murder by the Manson family.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: It was released in the United States on April 5, 2019, by Saban Films. The film was panned by critics.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: In August 1968, actress Sharon Tate describes to a journalist a nightmare she had, in which she and Jay Sebring, her friend and former lover, had their throats slashed. One year later, a very pregnant Sharon returns home after spending six months in Europe filming "The Thirteen Chairs". She is initially happy to be reunited with Jay, as well as friend/house-sitter Abigail "Gibby" Folger and Abigail's boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski. Sharon's husband , Roman Polanski, has stayed behind in Europe to complete the script for his next film "The Day of the Dolphin," but has assured Sharon he will be home in time for the birth of their baby. That night, Sharon tells Jay that she believes Roman is having an affair; Jay tells her it doesn't have to be this way, but Sharon is determined to save her marriage for the sake of the baby. Later, Sharon becomes angered upon finding that a new caretaker, Steven Parent, is living in a trailer on the property without her knowledge and asks what happened to the previous caretaker, William Garretson. She is told Garretson "hasn't been around in awhile." That night, while the group is socializing, Wojciech answers a knock at the door to find Charles Manson asking to see the house's former owner, music producer Terry Melcher. Wojciech tells Manson he has the wrong house.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: The following morning, Sharon and Abigail go for a walk, where they encounter two strange women, and subsequently find Sharon's pet dog dead alongside the trail. In the house's study, Sharon uncovers a recording of folk music by Manson, left behind by Melcher. The music disturbs her, and she remembers Manson's voice from her nightmare. Sharon later tells to Jay that she finds Abigail and Wojciech's extended stay at her home oppressive, and that she wishes they would leave. That night, Abigail sees a woman standing outside the window of her bedroom. Sharon has a nightmare in which she, Jay, Abigail, and Wojciech are brutally murdered by Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atkins.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: Sharon becomes convinced that Manson and his "family" are plotting to kill her, but Abigail and Wojciech dismiss her fears as paranoia stemming from her pregnancy. Sharon brings the Manson recording to Steven, who is knowledgeable about technology, and he determines that it contains subliminal messages when played in reverse, revealing the phrase "Helter Skelter." Sharon subsequently has a nightmare in which she finds Steven's corpse in his car, and becomes convinced the dreams are premonitions. When Sharon believes she is going into labor, Steven runs to start his car. Sharon sees that Manson's followers have arrived, and rushes to the car, attempting to thwart his impending murder. Steven crashes the car into a fence, and he and Sharon flee back to the house on foot, as Tex shoots in their direction repeatedly.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: In the house, Sharon, Abigail, Steven, and Wojciech attempt to barricade the entrances, and find the power has been cut. Jay arrives at the house as the group is confronted by Tex, who tells Jay he is the devil and has come "to do the devil's business." Tex and Susan usher them into the living room, where Steven and Wojciech are bound and gagged. Sharon stabs Tex with a penknife and frees Jay. In the ensuing melee, Abigail kills Susan by smashing her head on the corner of a table.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: Sharon, Jay, Abigail, and Steven retreat to Steven's trailer, while Patricia searches the house for Wojciech. She attempts to kill him, but he violently beats her before drowning her in the bathtub. Tex, injured but still alive, tracks the group as Steven attempts to use a CB radio to call for help. Tex breaches the camper, but Steven beats him with a shovel before Sharon shoots him to death.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: At dawn, the group approaches the house. As the others continue to the main road, Sharon returns to observe the crime scene. She is shocked to discover the corpses of Jay, Wojciech, Abigail and herself. Sharon realizes that the previous events were merely imagined, her "premonitions" were actually memories, and she and the others are, in fact, ghosts. Sharon, Jay, Abigail, Wojciech and Steven — realizing they are in the afterlife — walk away from the house, Sharon holding the child that she did not live to give birth to.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: In February 2018, it was announced Hilary Duff, Jonathan Bennett, and Lydia Hearst had joined the cast, with Daniel Farrands writing and directing. Lucas Jarach and Eric Brenner would serve as producers on the film, while Jim Jacobsen and Jorge Garcia Castro would serve as executive producers under their Skyline Entertainment banner. Duff also served as an executive producer for the film.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: In November 2018, Saban Films acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released on April 5, 2019.


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of , based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's consensus reads, ""The Haunting of Sharon Tate" dishonors the events it seeks to dramatize with a poorly acted and offensively exploitative take on real-life tragedy." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 8 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike".


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" gave the film a negative review, writing: "[T]he movie's petty folly — its failure of imagination and morality — is that it actually goes out of its way to turn the Manson murders into schlock horror." Frank Scheck, writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", referred to Duff as being "miscast" in the title role, and wrote that the film "deserves the instant obscurity for which it is certainly destined." David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of "D−", calling it "unfathomably bad" and writing that it "depicts the final days of Tate's life with all the sensitivity of a snuff film." Noel Murray of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that the film "turns the Manson cult’s crimes into fodder for a sleazy B-thriller". "TheWrap"s William Bibbiani wrote: "It's far too early to call ["The Haunting of Sharon Tate"] the worst movie of the year. But if it's not, it's going to be a rough 2019." Katie Rife of The A.V. Club gave it a grade "F" and wrote: "The worst part of "The Haunting Of Sharon Tate" is how seriously it takes its ham-fisted themes of fate and the nature of reality; the movie opens with an e quote, for fuck’s sake." Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com gave the film 0 out of 4 stars, calling it "appalling from start to finish".


title: The Haunting of Sharon Tate

text: The film received positive notices from "Starbust Magazine", "Cinedump", "Horror News", "Abort Mag", "Creative Screenwriting", "World Film Geek", "Film Threat", "Cultured Vultures", "His Name is Death", and "We Live Entertainment", many of whom cited Duff's performance and the film's spiritual themes and surprise ending. It also won three awards at the 2019 Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival for Farrands (Best Director), Duff (Best Actress) and Best Horror Movie.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema (; Wylie: rje btsun padma, born on 4 June 1990) is the Druk Gyaltsuen (Dzongkha: Dragon Queen) of Bhutan, as the wife of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. She is currently the youngest queen consort in the world. She and the King have two children: Prince Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck, the heir apparent to the Bhutanese throne, and Jigme Ugyen Wangchuck.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema was born at Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital in Thimphu on 4 June 1990. Her father, Dhondup Gyaltshen, is the grandson of two "Trashigang Dzongpons", Thinley Topgay and Ugyen Tshering (governors of Trashigang). Her mother, "Aum" Sonam Choki, comes from the family of Bumthang Pangtey, one of Bhutan's oldest noble families. Sonam Choki's father was a half-brother of two queens consort of Bhutan, Phuntsho Choden (great-grandmother of the present king) and her sister Pema Dechen.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Her ancestor is also the 48th Druk Desi and 10th Penlop of Trongsa Jigme Namgyal (father of King Ugyen Wangchuck and of her great-great-grandmother, "Ashi" Yeshay Choden). The King and Queen of Bhutan are distant cousins.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema is the second eldest of five children. Her siblings are two brothers, Jigme Namgyel and "Dasho" Thinley Norbu (the eldest, who is the husband of the king's half-sister, Princess "Ashi" Euphelma Choden Wangchuck), and two sisters, Serchen Doma and "Ashi" Yeatso Lhamo (the eldest, who is married to the king's brother, Prince "Gyaltshab" Jigme Dorji Wangchuck).


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema's early education took place in Thimphu at the Little Dragon School, the Sunshine School (1995–96) and finally the Changangkha Lower Secondary School (1997–98). She then received a convent education at St. Joseph's Convent in Kalimpong, West Bengal, India, in 1999–2000. She pursued her secondary education at the Lungtenzampa Middle Secondary School in Thimphu from 2001 to 2005 and moved to The Lawrence School, Sanawar, in Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India, in April 2006. She joined Lawrence as a Class-XI student and studied English, history, geography, economics, and painting. She completed her Higher Secondary education on 31 March 2008. She then began her tertiary education at Regent's University London, where she graduated with a degree in international relations, with psychology and art history as minor subjects.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: On 20 May 2011, during the opening of the Parliament's seventh session, the king announced their engagement, saying "As King, it is now time for me to marry. After much thought I have decided that the wedding shall be later this year."


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Describing Jetsun Pema, he said "Now, many will have their own idea of what a Queen should be like—that she should be uniquely beautiful, intelligent and graceful. I think with experience and time, one can grow into a dynamic person in any walk of life with the right effort. For the Queen, what is most important is that at all times, as an individual she must be a good human being, and as Queen, she must be unwavering in her commitment to serve the People and Country. As my queen, I have found such a person and her name is Jetsun Pema. While she is young, she is warm and kind in heart and character. These qualities together with the wisdom that will come with age and experience will make her a great servant to the nation."


title: Jetsun Pema

text: The couple married on 13 October 2011, at Punakha Dzong. The ceremony was held in Punakha, followed by a public celebration in Thimphu and Paro. During the ceremony, the King bestowed the Crown of the Druk Gyaltsuen on her, formally proclaiming her the Queen of the Kingdom of Bhutan.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: The wedding was held in traditional style with the "blessings of the guardian deities." Although Bhutan allows polygamy, the king said that he would never marry another woman. For their wedding, the Netherlands sent the royal couple tulips and named one "Queen of Bhutan" after her.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: On 11 November 2015, it was announced that she was expecting their first child, a son, to be born in early 2016. She gave birth on 5 February 2016 at the Lingkana Palace. The king was present for the birth of the prince, known by the title "Gyalsey". The baby's name, Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck, was announced on 16 April 2016.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: On 17 December 2019, it was reported that she was expecting their second child, to be born in spring 2020. On 19 March 2020, the King and Queen's official Instagram accounts reported that she had given birth to her second son in Lingkana Palace in Thimphu. On 30 June 2020, the Royal Family announced that the second Gyalsey had been named Jigme Ugyen Wangchuck, and would be known as His Royal Highness "Gyalsey" Ugyen Wangchuck.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Following her marriage to the King, Jetsun Pema has joined him on several visits abroad to India, Singapore, Japan and the United Kingdom.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema accompanied Jigme Khesar on several of his royal visits to various parts of Bhutan before their wedding, and as Queen of Bhutan, accompanies him on all such visits. The royal visits on road through the country involve meeting and interacting with as many local people, students and public servants as possible.


title: Jetsun Pema

text: Jetsun Pema is an advocate of environmental issues, and the Patron of the Royal Society for Protection of Nature (RSPN). She is also the UNEP Ozone Ambassador. She works closely with various organisations working with children with special needs as the patron of Ability Bhutan Society. She is the Patron of the Bhutan Kidney Association (Jigten Wangchuck Tshogpa) and the Bhutan Kidney Foundation. Since 2016 she has been the President of the Bhutan Red Cross Society (BRCS).


title: Jetsun Pema

text: The Queen's interests include fine arts, painting, and basketball. She captained her school team in basketball games and maintains an interest in the sport. Her other diversions during her school days included participation in school bands and dance programs. Besides Dzongkha, the national language of Bhutan, she is fluent in English and Hindi.


title: Carlo Collodi

text: Carlo Lorenzini (24 November 1826 – 26 October 1890), better known by the pen name Carlo Collodi (), was an Italian author, humourist, and journalist, widely known for his fairy tale novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio".