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Ocean Cyanobacteria – Nature’s Nitrogen Fixer

What nitrogen-fixing symbiotes like Alfalfa/Rhizobia do on land, Cyanobacteria (a.k.a. blue-green algae) does in the ocean. Cyanobacteria provide the largest portion of the nitrogen fixing in the ocean and are the foundational staple of the food web, being eaten by other plankton and thus spreading the nitrogen and elements throughout all sea life. Click here or here if you want to see how much plankton is in one drop of sea water. The spirals are the cyanobacteria. It’s amazing how the simplest and most prolific lifeform holds the key to our food and environment, and they’ve been there the whole time, right under our noses.

References:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/04/a-single-drop-of-seawater-magnified-25-times/

http://dive-shield.us/infonewspages/Underthemicroscopejustasplashofseawater.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838734/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838734/pdf/fmicb-07-00529.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838734/pdf/fmicb-07-00529.pdf

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-biology2/chapter/nitrogen-fixation/

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