BIOL 1104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Giardia Lamblia, Coral Bleaching, Carbon Sink
20 Apr 2020
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Document Summary
Protists exhibit more structural and functional diversity than any other group of eukaryotes. Though more protists are unicellular, there are some colonial and multicellular species. Many protists are parasites such as plasmodium which causes malaria. Approcx 900 000 people die each year from malaria. Giardia intestinalis causes beaver fever and trypanosoma causes sleeping sickness. Protists are the most nutritionally diverse or all eukaryotes. Diatoms are unicellular algae forming major component of phytoplankton. Diatoms play a role in global climate: after a diatom population has bloomed, many dead individuals fall to the ocean (carbon sink) floor decomposed, removing co2 from the atmosphere and pumping it to the ocean floor. When they die, their carbon that was ingested also sinks to ocean floor and stays there until maybe a volcano pumps it up or something. Dinoflagellates are a diverse and important group of aquatic phototrophs, mixotrophs, and heterotrophs. Coral bleaching is caused by the loss of the endosymbiotic dinoflagellates.
