#protists — Public Fediverse posts

The best time to find slime molds is in the summer after heavy rain. Well, that’s exactly what we have had at the house… or should I say, ON the house??

Slime molds have 2 stages: plasmodial and fruiting. In the first, they are capable of movement. They can climb things. In the second, they can have very cool shaped bodies as they prepare to release their spores.

This one climbed the wooden siding of my house. 😳

Chocolate Tube Slime
[Stemonitis splendens]

#SlimeMolds #SlimeMoulds #Protists

The best time to find slime molds is in the summer after heavy rain. Well, that’s exactly what we have had at the house… or should I say, ON the house??

Slime molds have 2 stages: plasmodial and fruiting. In the first, they are capable of movement. They can climb things. In the second, they can have very cool shaped bodies as they prepare to release their spores.

This one climbed the wooden siding of my house. 😳

Chocolate Tube Slime
[Stemonitis splendens]

#SlimeMolds #SlimeMoulds #Protists

@PoLaRobs @shelfyice
May I never stop being amazed at the intersections of geophysical and biological sciences #foramenifera #protists #ice

How a #parasite gave up sex to find more hosts—and why its victory won't last https://phys.org/news/2026-01-parasite-gave-sex-hosts-victory.html

Host range expansion of asexual parasite can be explained by loss of adaptions in Muller’s Ratchet https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65843-4

"an asexual lineage of #Giardia managed to infect a wider range of hosts than its sexual ancestor... at a cost. Because these #parasites don't exchange genetic material, harmful mutations build up over time, leading to eventual collapse"

#Protists #Microbes #Evolution

Shelled #amoeba crawls like an octopus, shifting tactics on the go https://phys.org/news/2026-01-shelled-amoeba-octopus-shifting-tactics.html https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/advpub/0/advpub_pjab.102.001/_html/-char/en

"Commonly found in #peatlands and freshwater environments, #Arcella belongs to a group called testate #amoebae, characterized by having its body enclosed, almost entirely, within a dome-shaped shell... Through an opening on its underside, Arcella can mold its cell body to create finger-like projections called #pseudopodia to capture prey and move around."

#Protists #Microbes

Photographing the hidden world of slime mould https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d9409p76qo

"These images, captured by photographer Barry Webb, provide a close-up view of single-celled #SlimeMoulds. A view that would not be possible with the naked eye... It's not fungi, it's not a plant, it's not animal... one picture would not do them justice, you can get virtually nothing in focus... he uses focus bracketing, where dozens of photos are taken."

#Protists #Microbes #SlimeMolds #Photography

Humanity should not expect to be able to communicate with extraterrestrial life, considering that there are hardly any life forms on Earth that we are able to fully communicate with. How many species of plants, bacteria, archea, or protists can humans fully communicate with?
#aliens #extraterrestrials #firstcontact #language #interspeciescommunication #animals #plants #bacteria #archea #protists #humans #intelligentlife

🦠 Are tiny gut protists rewriting what we know about “good” and “bad” microbes?

🔗 Structure analysis of human gut microbiota associated with single-celled gut protists using Next-Generation Sequencing of 16S and 18S rRNA genes. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2025.06.006

📚 CSBJ: https://www.csbj.org/

#Microbiome #GutHealth #Metagenomics #Protists #Blastocystis #Giardia #NGS #Microbiota #MicrobialEcology #NGS #ComputationalBiology #MolecularBiology

Arctic #algae aren't immobile or entombed. They're not just surviving either—they're gliding into the record books https://phys.org/news/2025-09-scientists-uncover-extreme-life-arctic.html

Ice gliding #diatoms establish record-low temperature limits for motility in a eukaryotic cell https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2423725122

"When they compared #Arctic diatoms with temperate relatives gliding along glass, the polar species moved much faster, hinting at an evolutionary advantage... Could they be moving resources through the Arctic food web?"

#protists #microbes

I believe I found some Haematococcus pluvialis in my birdbath, which apparently is where they commonly occur due to the high sunlight. The red astaxanthin pigments are UV protective. It looked like the rotifers were preferentially eating them.

#algae #protists #microscope

For the giant virus and Euglena fans out there:

Giant endogenous viral elements in the genome of the model protist Euglena gracilis reveal past interactions with giant viruses

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.00713-25

#virology #protists #viruses #microbiology

How #diatoms thrive in—and light up—the Southern Ocean https://phys.org/news/2025-08-illuminates-diatoms-southern-ocean.html paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GB008457

"An area of the remote #SouthernOcean that's long confused ocean color satellites by reflecting large amounts of turquoise-colored light appears to be full of silica-rich diatoms"

#Protists #Microbes #Algae

Sugars from the ocean are responsible for a large part of the ice nuclei over southern hemisphere https://phys.org/news/2025-07-sugars-salty-ocean-responsible-large.html Paper by Susan Hartmann et al.: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c08014

"ice-forming molecules (affecting cloud formation) produced by #fungi & #protists in seawater can enter the atmosphere... there was a lack of knowledge about the chemical identity of these molecules... polysaccharides could be the missing piece of the puzzle"