Tootfinder

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Ostracods are crustaceans that look like tiny clams. "Seed shrimp" have distinct shell-like carapaces that are well preserved in the fossil record and found in many waterbodies in benthic or pelagic realms. Planktonic ostracods extend their antennae and appendages to swim and capture food. They can exhibit green or blue bioluminescence and are very nume…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Happy New Year everyone. While species are often named out of respect for famous people, one had never been named for a TV series. This changed in 2018 when scientists at University College of London named a Southern Ocean cocolithophorid phytoplankton "Syracosphaera azureaplaneta" after Sir David Attenborough's BBC Blue Planet series. They look lik…

#PlanktonSocial
Tja, was soll ich sagen? Funktioniert einfach :-) So können sich #Blogger/innen ohne eine große Plattform untereinander vernetzen und gleichzeitig die eigene Basis und Domain nutzen.

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Velella velella is the by-the-wind sailor, a type of floating colonial siphonophore, almost like a tiny version of portuguese man-of-war. It is often found in large numbers on beaches because they have a "sail" set at 45° either to the left or right. As a result, they can sail differently depending on wind direction. It is thought both forms are mixed m…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Many aquatic animals are described as "filter feeders" but this is not functionally correct since it would require water forced through a mesh. Instead, most zooplankton, including copepods, are suspension feeders. They create feeding current gyres using appendages, and use spiny modified ones (maxillae) to intercept individual algal particles and move …

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Tintinnids ("tinkling bells") are ciliates found in fresh and saltwater known for their characteristic vase-shaped shell called a lorica. These are formed of tough proteins, incorporating minerals from the water and vary considerably by species. The shell offers protection and optimizes feeding on phytoplankton, bacteria and flagellates. These small pro…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Light🕯 is important to the holiday season, so how about a story on bioluminescence? Japanese soldiers during WW2 harvested the ostracod Vargula hilgendorfii "umi-hotaru sea firefly" and dried them. Water was added to a jar for use as glowsticks to discretely read maps. Hakai magazine has a wonderful bioluminescence article, including details on Osamu Sh…

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…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Bdelloid rotifers are a microplankton that reproduce using parthenogenesis (female clones), but when environmental conditions become adverse (e.g. pond dries up), they can turn themselves into an extraordinaryly resistant inert "tun" through a process called cryptobiosis (like brine shrimp). Recently, Russian scientists thawed out

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Most plankton are tiny, making it very difficult to visualize their internal structures. Enter "expansion microscopy" a technique that embeds the organism in a gel which absorbs water and expands up to 16x, yet retains all of the internal cell details. This means you can view structures normally too small to see with light

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.

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

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Most cladocerans have a bivalve carapace, but one genus is very different. Leptodora is globally distributed in the north, large (~2 cm), elongated, and effectively transparent, leading it to be coined "ghost flea" by a colleague. It is a primitive genus and is the only cladoceran with a nauplius stage. Highly predaceous with a huge eye, it preys on juv…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Heliozoans are a group of amoeboid protists found commonly in both fresh and saltwater. They were termed sun-animalcules due to their spherical shape and distinctive radiating microtubules, which support axiopods used to capture food and facilitate movement. Some will also capture symbiotic algal cells which provide energy through photosynthesis. Heliozoa is &quo…