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
Marine microorganism the Paleozoic era (390 million years ago). Of eukaryotic groups, the protists are most commonly unicellular and microscopic. This is a highly diverse group of organisms that are not easy to classify. Several algae species are multicellular protists, and there are marine slime molds have unique life cycles that involve switching between unicellular, colonial, and multicellular forms. The number of species of protists is unknown, and we may have identified only a small portion. Studies from 2001-2004 have shown that a high degree of protist diversity exists in oceans, deep sea-vents, river sediment and an acidic river, which suggests that