Habitat / Adaptation

In the past, cyanobacteria were known to be present in fresh water and terrestrial areas and were thought to be unimportant in the oceans. Still present in fresh water and earthbound environments, cyanobacteria are now considered to be important for being present in our oceans. Inside our modern oceans, within the cyanobacterium group, Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus were discovered to adapt as one of the ocean’s bases of the food chain. As the bases of the food chain, they are responsible for converting air, light, and water into available food for their predators.

Since the Pre-Cambrian era, cyanobacteria have contributed to produce oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the air through a photosynthetic procedure, similar to that of plants. This ability to perform oxygenic photosynthesis was thought to have crucially changed the Earth’s selection of biodiversity and lead to a close extinction of organisms which are oxygen intolerant. In whole, from the processes of the past, Earth has now become an environment available to support life.