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@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-05-31 17:00:11

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Today's organism is the primarily freshwater dinoflagellate phytoplankon genus Ceratium, characterized by cellulose armored plates, two flagella, and horns, resembling Eiffel towers. These large, tough algae can form dense blooms which few zooplankton graze, and can cause oxygen depletion. These 7 species are mixotrophic, so graze on other algae or bacteria …

A brightfield microscope image of a Bosmina zooplankton surrounded by hundreds of armoured Ceratium algae with long spines, which are much too large for it to consume. Photo from DFO, public domain.
image/jpeg an illustration of an algae with patterned armored plates, long spines, and two groves which contain flagella. Ceratium tripos (now Tripos Muelleri) Ernst Haeckel, public domain.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-06-28 17:38:26

Hello everyone.
I am taking a social media wellness break from posting my Weekend #Plankton Factoids for the boreal summer. I hope you have the opportunity to do something you enjoy over the season as well. Until then ❤️.

A tiny crustacean zooplankton with a long spine "nose" looks like a elephant or the Mastodon logo. Bosmina longirostis.
The Mastodon logo is a a stylized elephant with trunk extending underneath in purple with a curvy white M on top.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-04-25 13:00:19

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
If you are a filter feeder how to you deal with a gummed up feeding mechanism? Cladoceran zooplankton have a post abdominal claw with a sharp pointed tip which acts as a combination toothpick and anchor to clear out the feeding groove of the carapace. Some groups also grasp algal filaments or plants with it. These claws are distinctive to species based on the si…

image/jpeg a microscopic photo of a oblong crustacean with a large black eye about 1 mm long based on a scale bar. A distinctive claw extends from the bottom with a very sharp point. Ceriodaphnia retriculata from An Image-Based Key To The Zooplankton Of North America https://cfb.unh.edu/cfbkey/html/index.html
image/jpeg an appendage of the zooplankton Ceriodaphnia shows a series of spines along one side of a robust portion, with a very sharp pointed claw extending that has smaller distinctive setae spines at the base. From observation.org Ulrich Drabiniok.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-05-24 17:00:08

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
This is likely Earth's most common metazoan (animal). Meet Oithona similis, a small predatory, cyclopoid copepod. It is highly tolerant of temperature and salinity ranges, having a cosmopolitan distribution within every ocean, from poles to tropics, and is common in the epi to mesopelagic zones. Densities range from hundreds to several thousand per m³ of wat…

image/jpeg a photomicrograph of a long, thin, brownish, torpedo shaped crustacean with bristled antennae, a bright red eye spot. Scale bar indicates the animal is about 1 mm long. Photo from A Slotwinski, CSIRO 2011.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-04-11 13:01:40

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
With the safe return of NASA's Artemis II, it is time to talk about plankton space #science 🛰. PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) is the latest advanced observing satellite launched Feb 2024 which carries the OCI Ocean Colour Instrument measuring hyp…

image/png a satellite image identifies two different algal communities in the ocean off South Africa on Feb. 28, 2024. The central panel of this image shows Synechococcus in pink and picoeukaryotes in green. The left panel of this image shows a natural color view of the ocean, and the right panel displays the concentration of the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll-a used to identify the presence of phytoplankton. This is the first composite image from the Ocean Colour Instrument on the PACE sat…
image/png a logo for PACE program shaped as a curved triangular arrow head with a stylized image of a portion of the Earth showing swirls of phytoplankton and wind and flared stars in the background. The outer edge contains the words on the sides. Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem. Advanced Measurements of Sea & Sky. NASA/GSFC • UMBC • SRON/Airbus NL.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-06-21 17:02:28

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Researchers that work on zooplankton are all familiar with fecal pellets since it is a major pathway of #carbon flux to the bottom of the oceans. A study recently measured gut passage time of

image/jpeg a microscope image of a crustacean shrimp-like copepod with bright green fluorescent particles in its gut. Photo from Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML).
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-05-17 17:12:30

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
I spent the last week attending the joint ASLO - SIL conference (the two largest #limnology societies) in Montréal. There were many interesting talks, including a few on alpine lake systems. These are very cold, ice-covered for much of the year, with extreme adapted…

image/jpeg a bright orange tear-drop shaped crustacean with two distinct egg sacs. Photo from: David Gifford. https://www.shetlandlochs.com/species/eukaryota/animalia/arthropoda/maxillopoda/cyclopoida/cyclopoida/cyclops/abyssorum/
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-06-14 17:00:17

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Recent news has documented warming in polar regions reducing upwelling of cold nutrient rich water and thus algae production. Researchers investigated the change in carbon to chlorophyll ratio to determine nutrient stress.
The genus is Prochlorococcus, a cyanobacteria found across the world's oceans. Because it is so tiny (0.6 micron) it passes through…

image/jpeg a number of oval bright green cells with internal ringed structures is seen in a coloured transmission electron microscope image. Source: Luke Thompson from Chisholm Lab and Nikki Watson from Whitehead, MIT. CCO 1.0 public domain.
@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2026-04-04 13:30:21

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
#ClimateChange is expected to modify food-webs in the oceans, including in nutrition. In an MIT modeling study scientists found that under heating scenarios, phytoplankon can shift from protein to carbohydrate and lipid dominated cell composition, which they hav…

image/png a microscope image of a variety of golden-coloured algae forms, with some forming long chains of cells while others are single-celled. Photo from Stephanie Anderson, University of Rhode Island, public domain.