Yet these tiny organisms — called plankton — may be unable to thrive in the rapidly warming oceans, according to a pair of ...

Many phytoplankton are microscopic, and they range from single-celled algae to bacteria to protists, which aren’t plants or animals. One thing they all have in common: They require sunlight.

Melt ponds on the surface of the sea ice bring so much sunlight into the underlying seawater that the mixotrophic plankton algae start to grow dramatically. During an approx. 9-day period ...