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 Earth's life and may play roles in both the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle. Algae can grow as single cells, or in long chains of cells. Green algae are a large group of photosynthetic eukaryotes that include many microscopic organisms. Green algae include unicellular and colonial flagellates as well as various colonial, coccoid, and filamentous forms. There are about 6000 species. Over 1500 species of fungi are known from marine environments. These are parasitic on marine algae or animals, or are saprobes on algae, corals, protozoan cysts, sea grasses, wood and other substrata, and can also be found in