Introduction to Marine Biology
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Introduction to Marine Biology |
Marine biology etextbook
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The science of marine biology is the study of marine organisms. It includes nearly all the subdisciplines of biology
as they apply to marine organisms (such as biochemistry, microbiology, taxonomy and systematics, physiology, ecology, etc.).
This definition is of course very broad, and in practice marine biologists typically specialize in one or very few of these subdisciplines.
In many respects, marine organisms have much in common with freshwater and terrestrial organisms, and studies of physiological, evolutionary,
and ecological processes are very similar, although there are many important differences between the ways that organisms have evolved in the
aquatic and terrestrial environments. Oceanography is the field of science that concerns the study of the oceans. There is much in common between marine biologists and oceanographers, except that oceanography includes many subdiscilines of geology, physics, and chemistry, as well as some aspects of biology. Biological oceanographers are often concerned more with properties of the oceans that are affected by large scale biological processes, for example plankton productivity, and are usually less concerned about individual species and their interactions. However, there are some areas of overlap between marine biology and oceanography, and some types of studies could be considered to belong in either discipline. Listed below are links to several good general textbooks and reference books for marine biology, as well as some links to online sites that discuss a broad range of topics within the scientific field of marine biology.
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