Tootfinder

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 🦠🦐
The White Cliffs of Dover are an iconic formation often seen on television or films that can be over 100 m high. The white colour is chalk "biomicrite" formed by the compacted deposits from dense blooms of Coccolithophore phytoplankton covered with distinct plates of calcite (coccoliths) in a shallow sea during the Late Cretaceous. The dark bands of fli…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Some calanoid copepods, including Calanus finmarchicus, spend 6-8 months of the winter in a dormancy state as juvenile copepodites deep under the thermocline at a depth of 500-1500m which reduces predation and energy use. This depth is determined by interaction of temperature and salinity of the water and the copepod's lipid content of waxy esters. They have …

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…

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
In recent years it has been found that phytoplankton productivity can be fueled by deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These vents produce iron and dense microbial blooms which can locally stimulate algae blooms, but it wasn't clear how this linkage of ecosystems separated by kilometers was possible. Now, an Antarctic study suggests that earthquakes can cause violen…

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 polar vortex has caused a cold snap here, and the Great Lakes are rapidly forming ice. Under this thick ice, algae are growing. These are normal diatom phytoplankton, which change to form thick chains, attaching to the underside of the ice where light is optimal. We clearly see this brown ice and water in the wake of our icebreakers. This occurs near the pole…

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 🦠🦐
Hypoxia (low oxygen) is a serious environmental impact in some coastal marine and freshwater environments, often referred to as "dead zones". In spite of the name, while fish are absent, they can be teeming with crustacean and gelateous zooplankton, which have remarkable tolerance to hypoxia. Some cladoceran zooplankton even produce hemoglobin to store …

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