Evelyn B. Sherr and Barry F.Sherr were at the University of Georgia Marine Institute, Sapelo Island, GA 31327, USA; College of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 1991 Feb;6(2):50-4. doi: 10.1016/0169-5347(91)90122-E.
Phytoplankton in the size range 5-100 μm was originally thought to be the primary source of food for most life in the sea. However, smaller planktonic microbes, down to 0.2 μm in size, have been the focus of intensive investigation by marine scientists during the past two decades. These microbes attain high abundance and biomass in all parts of the world ocean. They include non-photosynthesizing bacteria, at least two types of photosynthesizing prokaryotes, and eukaryotic phototrophs. The new information has resulted in a greatly revised concept of how pelagic ecosystems in both marine and freshwater environments function. The original idea of a basically linear food chain from diatoms to copepods to fish has given way to an extremely complex model of trophic interactions within a microbial food web, which supports metazoan food webs via biomass production of both heterotrophic and autotrophic cells.
浮游植物的大小范围在 5-100 微米之间，最初被认为是海洋中大多数生物的主要食物来源。然而，在过去的二十年中，海洋科学家们将重点放在了更小的浮游微生物上，这些微生物的大小可达 0.2 微米。这些微生物在世界海洋的各个部分都达到了很高的丰度和生物量。它们包括不进行光合作用的细菌、至少两种类型的进行光合作用的原核生物，以及真核光合生物。这些新信息极大地改变了海洋和淡水环境中浮游生态系统的功能概念。从硅藻到桡足类动物再到鱼类的基本线性食物链的原始想法已经让位于一个极其复杂的微生物食物网中的营养相互作用模型，这个模型通过异养和自养细胞的生物量生产来支持后生动物食物网。
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