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@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
2026-06-14 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
2026-05-31 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
2026-05-24 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.