Living Wheels of Plankton

Living Wheels of Plankton

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Living Wheels of Plankton, in acrylic, AVR 2014. Author's concept of association and cooperation among the sea's plankton communities cum associates that form food webs at sea and lakes.  Sub-colonies in gyrating motion allows independence as well as convergence, always in dynamic balance.  This original concept is a tool for survival, following the principle of cellular organization into tissues, into organs and ultimately, into systems. Taken collectively, plankton form ecological systems that have common as well as distinct individual characteristics.   

Plankton, the biggest and most diverse group of organisms form interacting sub-colonies of millions of members living at the lighted zone of seas and lakes some 10 to 50 meters deep; 

Plankton, they are organized into food chains, to food webs and pyramids, through which the sun's energy flows through the living system these organisms make;

Plankton, the autotrophs (photo-synthesizers) capture solar energy, the heterotrophs (consumers), feed of the former, in turn are food of other bigger organisms, including man;

Plankton, without them the seas, oceans, and lakes would be barren like desert; they form the earth's largest pasture, the number one producers of biomass and Oxygen that supply the living world;    

Plankton, they are the least understood in composition and ecology, yet they are the oldest organisms, many barely changed through evolution some one billion years ago;  

Plankton, the least subject of art and literature, imagined more as fantasy rather than science, and nil in understanding social biology that links them with the human species;   

Plankton, they must have evolved from somewhere else other the primeval earth, perhaps they rode on asteroids, rose separately, but later merged into the family tree of life. ~