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Science 16 July 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5682, pp. 354 - 360
DOI: 10.1126/science.1095964
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The Evolution of Modern Eukaryotic Phytoplankton

Paul G. Falkowski,1,2* Miriam E. Katz,2 Andrew H. Knoll,3 Antonietta Quigg,1{dagger} John A. Raven,4 Oscar Schofield,1 F. J. R. Taylor5

The community structure and ecological function of contemporary marine ecosystems are critically dependent on eukaryotic phytoplankton. Although numerically inferior to cyanobacteria, these organisms are responsible for the majority of the flux of organic matter to higher trophic levels and the ocean interior. Photosynthetic eukaryotes evolved more than 1.5 billion years ago in the Proterozoic oceans. However, it was not until the Mesozoic Era (251 to 65 million years ago) that the three principal phytoplankton clades that would come to dominate the modern seas rose to ecological prominence. In contrast to their pioneering predecessors, the dinoflagellates, coccolithophores, and diatoms all contain plastids derived from an ancestral red alga by secondary symbiosis. Here we examine the geological, geochemical, and biological processes that contributed to the rise of these three, distantly related, phytoplankton groups.

1 Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08540, USA.
2 Department of Geological Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
3 Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
4 Division of Environmental and Applied Biology, University of Dundee at SCRI, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee DD2 5DA, UK.
5 Department of Earth and Ocean Science, and Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, 6270 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4.



{dagger} Present address: Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University, Galveston, TX 77551, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: falko{at}imcs.rutgers.edu

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