Smallest Yet Deadliest Organism In The Ocean Has Been Uncovered

The oceans and the sea are composed of various marine animals and living creatures such as corals and planktons. The common animals that people can identify are fish, sharks, dolphin, whales and so much more. Recently, a research team conducted a study on one of the killer Triffids that dominates the ocean life.

The study author Aditee Mitra, a lecturer in Bioscience from Swansea University, lead the research on the deeper side of planktons. It has been known that planktons are organisms that scatter all over the different types of water bodies. They can move between the surface and the deeper parts of the water,  but they are helpless against the currents.

It was also known that this single-celled microscopic plankton is divided into two types. Phytoplankton also known as the microalgae is the food producing tiny marine plants. Meanwhile, the microzooplankton is the ones who eat the phytoplankton. However, the microzooplankton  also serves as food for the zooplankton such as krills.

Now, the researchers' study another type of microscopic plankton group beyond the waves called mixotrophs. The experts have learned that the mixotrophs are the combined features of phytoplankton "plant-like" and the microzooplankton "animal-like." Their mode of feeding, the researchers described it as the stuff of horror stories, according to the Conversation.

The mixotrophs are described as miniature triffids, it is also labeled as the freak of nature. It can consume living prey, suck out their innards, poison them, harpoon them, enable the prey to explode, and steals the prey's body parts and reuse it. The mixotrophs can kill the whole ecosystem in just a matter of hours. It can also change the color of the water. But, they are also responsible for the shape of the Earth's atmosphere and support the development of larval fish in their critical stages of the life cycle.

However, the study, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the researchers were able to entrench that the mixotrophs are not freaks of nature, but it is a norm rather than the exception. It has been implied that the traditional oceanic food web does not follow the "plant-like pattern." Rather, it is dominated by the activities of the single-celled mixotrophs that photosynthesis like plants and eat animals all in just one cell, according to Science Alert.