Living Together in the Plankton: A Survey of Marine Protist Symbioses

Abstract

Our best evidence is that life arose in the marine environment, and over many millennia of evolutionary proliferation, punctuated by occasional massive extinctions, marine protists have developed remarkably elegant and sometimes complex relationships with prokaryotic and eukaryotic symbionts. Current evidence of the range of marine protist taxa possessing symbionts, including their diversity and physiological functional relationships, is reviewed within an ecological context. Some perspectives are presented on potential opportunities for new avenues of research in unraveling the remarkable adaptive value of two or more genetically diverse marine unicellular organisms living in a close structural and physiological relationship.