Tootfinder

Opt-in global Mastodon full text search. Join the index!

@DrPlanktonguy@ecoevo.social
2025-10-04 13:45:06

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
While crustaceans are common as #zooplankton, insects are very rare, but one group is found globally in freshwaters. Chaoborus (phantom midge or glassworm) spend the majority of their life as predaceous plankton, but are familiar to many when the adults emerge lake…

image/jpeg a mostly transparent elongated organism with hooked antenna on the head and a wide fan of spines at the tail floats in the water. CC BY-SA 4.0.
image/jpeg what looks like dark clouds of smoke emerge from a tropical lake as seen from a rocky coast. From Scott Cable. http://wearthefoxhat.us/malawi-lake-flies/
image/jpeg a photograph of a fly insect with long legs, two dark eyes, and incredibly fuzzy large antennae. Phantom Midge Chaoborus crystallinus by Tony Pattinson https://www.quekett.org/resources/article-archive/bsw-2017/bsw17-phantom-midge.
image/jpeg a diagram showing the mechanical work of pH-sensitive resilin to control buoyancy of Chaoborus hydrostatic air-sacs. Acidic reduces buoyancy by contracting the air-sac volume. Alkaline does the opposite. From McKenzie et al. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.018