Plankton is the aggregate community of weakly swimming but mostly drifting small organisms that inhabit the water column of the ocean, seas, and bodies of freshwater. The name comes from the Greek term, πλαγκτoν—meaning "wanderer" or "drifter."Plankton is the aggregate community of weakly swimming but mostly drifting small organisms that inhabit the water column of the ocean, seas, and bodies of freshwater. The name comes from the Greek term, πλαγκτoν—meaning "wanderer" or "drifter."
While some forms of plankton can move several hundreds of meters vertically in a single day (a behavior called diel vertical migration), their horizontal position is mostly determined by water movement (currents) in the body of water they inhabit. Larger organisms, such as squid, fish, and marine mammals that can control their horizontal movement and swim against the average flow of the water environment, are called nekton. The study of plankton is termed planktology.
Plankton concentration and distribution are sensitive to chemical and physical changes in the water.
This is a sample file for Google: Optimizing Your Site, a tutorial offered by the Networked Information Services at Boston University. Information on this page is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooplankton.