Pandoravirus sediments. Pandoraviruses, like other marine viruses, prey on plankton, which are organisms that live in the water column and form the basis of the food chain for other marine species. More study and research needs to be done in order to confirm the prevalence of Pandoraviruses in different environments. Currently, not much is known about their role in marine ecosystems. Pandoraviruses do have approximately 93% of their genes that are unidentifiable with any other microbes, suggesting they may belong to an as of yet undescribed "fourth domain" aside from Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes. Viruses as a whole are not popularly
Osmotrophy Osmotrophy Osmotrophy is the uptake of dissolved organic compounds by osmosis for nutrition. Organisms that use osmotrophy are osmotrophs. Some mixotrophic microorganisms use osmotrophy to derive energy. The organisms that used osmotrophy are known to be an osmotrophs which are usually found in protists and fungi although exclusively osmotrophic feeding in contemporary ecosystems are restricted to microscopic bacteria thereby used the process of osmosis for the movement of food although some macroscopic animals like molluscs, sponges, corals, brachiopods and echinoderms used osmotrophic feeding as a supplemental food source. Osmotrophy is a means of gathering nutrients in microscopic organisms that relies