Author Question: There are planktonic forms of every major group of animals. a. True b. ... (Read 97 times)

RODY.ELKHALIL · **on:** Aug 22, 2018

There are planktonic forms of every major group of animals.
a. True
b. False

Question 2

Describe what happens to carbon when an animal eats a plant. Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).

randomguy133 · **Reply #1 on:** Aug 22, 2018

Answer to Question 1

True

Answer to Question 2

When an animal eats a plant (or plantlike organism), three things can happen to the carbon:
(1) it can be incorporated into the animals body for growth, (2) it can be respired by the
animal (taken apart to harvest the energy), or (3) it can be wasted, excreted back into the
seawater as dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Typically, about 45 of the carbon from an
ingested plant is used for growth, about 45 is used for respiration, and about 10 is lost as
DOC. The end product of respiration is CO2, a gas eventually lost to the atmosphere. Most of
the DOC is rapidly used by bacteria, which are in turn eaten by protozoans, which are eaten
by zooplankton, which are then eaten by fish, in what is termed the microbial loop.