Tootfinder

🦠 Using Freshwater Cladophora glomerata to Develop Sustainable Farming
#algae

Why was I today years old when I learned about bio-photovoltaics?
This is a technology which instead of using silicon wafers as the basis for photovoltaic cells, uses a sandwich comprising
1. A transparent window, to allow sunlight in;
2. Algae, to photosynthesise sugars;
3. A membrane to keep the algae separate from the bacteria;
4. Bacteria, which consume sugar and generate electricity;
5. A filter, to allow the biological components to breathe.
#1/2

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 87 nodes and 375 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
The poles are cold and dark half the year, so you might think these areas were low productivity. Nope. These are some of the highest productivity and efficient food webs on the planet, which is why whales will travel half the globe to feed here. When sunlight returns in spring, long days and nutrients drive intense blooms. There was a question of nutrient sources…

🦠 Turning microalgae into a sustainable high protein food solution
#algae

Turning microalgae into a sustainable high protein food solution
As climate change and a growing global population strains our existing food supply, scientists are looking on land and at sea for innovative solutions.

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 71 nodes and 148 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

🦠 Beyond the usual suspect: Nitrogen feeds algae blooms, researchers find
#water

Beyond the usual suspect: Nitrogen feeds algae blooms, researchers find
Nitrogen is a bit of a conundrum. In its gaseous form it's the most abundant element in the atmosphere, but few organisms can readily use it. And while all living organisms contain nitrogen, a new University of Vermont study finds that even tiny amounts of nitrogen can fuel cyanobacterial blooms and disrupt lake ecosystems.

Film critique, but about filamentous algae that grows in dense mats on the surface of ponds

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
You've likely watched a police procedural where the lab states the drowning was suspicious because of algae. The shells of diatoms have long been used in forensic #limnology because they are made of glass, so preserve very well.

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 94 nodes and 424 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

The takeaway sentence here: “[T]wo-thirds of new data centers built or in development [in the US] since 2022 are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress.”
This is particularly pertinent here in #Australia, where already, once-plentiful artesian water’s dwindling, nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich runoff chokes waterways with algae and destroys coral reefs, and

Automated Gating for Flow Cytometry Data Using a Kernel-Smoothed EM Algorithm
Farhad de Sousa, Fran\c{c}ois Ribalet, Jacob Bien
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06051 https://

Automated Gating for Flow Cytometry Data Using a Kernel-Smoothed EM Algorithm
Phytoplankton are microscopic algae responsible for roughly half of the world's photosynthesis that play a critical role in global carbon cycles and oxygen production, and measuring the abundance of their subtypes across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales is of great relevance to oceanography. High-frequency flow cytometry is a powerful technique in which oceanographers at sea can rapidly record the optical properties of tens of thousands of individual phytoplankton cells every few minutes. …

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Since 2011, millions of tons of a brown algae called Sargassum has washed onto beaches in the Caribbean. The rotting seaweed releases toxic hydrogen sulfide, smelling of rotten eggs, impacting tourism and shore access. It was initially thought Saharan iron dust was the cause, but new #science

Modal analysis and optimization of swimming active filaments
John Severn, Eric Lauga
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09627 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09627

Modal analysis and optimization of swimming active filaments
Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial swimmers. Classical studies have quantified the relationship between internal forcing (localised or distributed internal moments or forces) and external output (filament shape and swimming speed). In this paper, we pose locomotion as a mathematical optimisation pr…

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 86 nodes and 353 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

🪸 Tree rings of the sea: How environmental conditions influence microalgae and coral communities
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-tree-sea-environmental-conditions-microalgae.html

Tree rings of the sea: How environmental conditions influence microalgae and coral communities
An international research team led by marine biologist Prof. Dr. Maren Ziegler from Justus Liebig University Giessen (JU) has developed an innovative method for reconstructing the past of corals and their symbiosis with algae by drilling into coral skeletons. The results, published in Global Change Biology, offer new insights into changes in symbiotic single-celled algae species that are crucial to the survival of coral reefs.

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 71 nodes and 148 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 58 nodes and 117 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 69 nodes and 187 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata

Disentangling peri-urban river hypoxia
Ovidio Garc\'ia-Oliva, Carsten Lemmen, Xiangyu Li, Kai Wirtz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05775 https://arxiv.org/…

Disentangling peri-urban river hypoxia
Episodes of low dissolved oxygen concentration--hypoxia--threaten the functioning of and the services provided by aquatic ecosystems, particularly those of urban rivers. Here, we disentangle oxygen-related processes in the highly modified Elbe River flowing through the major German city of Hamburg, where low oxygen levels are frequently observed. We use a process-based biochemical model that describes particulate and dissolved organic matter, micro-algae, their pathogens, and the key reactions …

🦠 Global initiative launches to prioritize conservation of vital microbial life
#bacteria

Global initiative launches to prioritize conservation of vital microbial life
Microbes include bacteria, viruses, fungi, algae and archaea (single-celled microorganisms with a bacteria-like structure). They are invisible to the human eye, but they play a huge role, shaping ecosystems, producing food and regulating disease.

fresh_webs: Freshwater stream webs
A set of 26 networks of trophic-level species interactions in streams in New Zealand, Maine and North Carolina. Networks include the identities of aquatic insect, algae and fish species and their trophic interactions. Excel and plain text adjacency matrices available; webs can be downloaded individually or as a group.
This network has 85 nodes and 227 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food web, Unweighted, Metadata