![]() The following characteristics can be used to define a seagrass species. Seagrasses are a paraphyletic group of marine angiosperms which evolved in parallel three to four times from land plants back to the sea. ![]() They function as important carbon sinks and provide habitats and food for a diversity of marine life comparable to that of coral reefs. Seagrasses form dense underwater seagrass meadows which are among the most productive ecosystems in the world. Crustaceans (such as crabs, Majidae zoae, Thalassinidea zoea) and syllid polychaete worm larvae have both been found with pollen grains, the plant producing nutritious mucigenous clumps of pollen to attract and stick to them instead of nectar as terrestrial flowers do. While it was previously believed this pollination was carried out without pollinators and purely by sea current drift, this has been shown to be false for at least one species, Thalassia testudinum, which carries out a mixed biotic-abiotic strategy. Most species undergo submarine pollination and complete their life cycle underwater. Like all autotrophic plants, seagrasses photosynthesize, in the submerged photic zone, and most occur in shallow and sheltered coastal waters anchored in sand or mud bottoms. The name seagrass stems from the many species with long and narrow leaves, which grow by rhizome extension and often spread across large " meadows" resembling grassland many species superficially resemble terrestrial grasses of the family Poaceae. Seagrasses evolved from terrestrial plants which recolonised the ocean 70 to 100 million years ago. ![]() There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families ( Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and Cymodoceaceae), all in the order Alismatales (in the clade of monocotyledons). ![]() ![]() Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. Zostera marina – the most abundant seagrass species in the Northern Hemisphere ![]()
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