| Summary: | This chapter discusses the biodiversity and main biogeographic patterns of marine plankton, the causes of such patterns, as well as factors that influence spatial and temporal plankton distribution. Plankton are influenced by a large number of environmental factors and as a result are not distributed randomly in the oceans and seas. Plankton biodiversity is constrained by hydroclimatic parameters such as temperature, bathymetry, and oceanic surface currents or large-scale hydrodynamic features such as the subarctic gyre. Plankton also follow most of the main divisions of the pelagic realm. The marine ecosphere can be divided into three main ecomes: (1) cold regions (Arctic and Antarctic), (2) cold-temperate regions, and (3) warm-temperate regions.
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