ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the biology of protists and fungi, highlighting selected examples that are particularly important in marine ecology. The protists are highly diverse and play a major role in ocean food webs providing trophic links to zooplankton, both as primary producers in the photic zone and as consumers in all parts of the water column and the benthos. The term “protist” is widely accepted as a term of convenience to describe a wide assortment of unicellular eukaryotic microbes. There have been many attempts to develop phylogenetic trees that depict the relationships between the many different eukaryotic lineages. Since the 1990s, the application of molecular methods has led to a fundamental shift in understanding of relationships between organisms. Species names are often complex, and students struggle with pronouncing and retaining them, so it always helps if the name has some memorable feature.