Category: Ciliates
Is there anything stranger than ciliates?
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A vivid, 273-year-old description of a famous ciliate
(And another funny description of a creature that, probably, doesn’t exist.) Both I discovered in the excellent A manual of the Infusoria, by English biologist William Saville-Kent, published in 1882. “Infusoria” was a term used at the time to encompass virtually all protozoans (that is, anything flagellate, ciliate or “tentaculiferous”) observed in water. From what…
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Frog feet
A few days ago, a colleague of mine asked me how biologists decide which microalga is their favourite. (She’s a physicist, I guess these strange people have favourite equations or something.) That got me thinking. What’s the coolest microbial species? Of course, the answer will depend on who you ask, because the notion of “cool”…
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The sorcerer’s apprentices of photosynthesis
This is the third part of my series on Dinophysis. If you didn’t read the first and second part, go read them and come back! We’ve now seen how Dinophysis was finally cultivated in the lab: by feeding it with its prey, the ciliate Mesodinium rubrum. Both of these microbes thrive by acquiring chloroplasts from foreign origin.…
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The domestication of Dinophysis
This is the second part of my series on Dinophysis. If you didn’t read the first part, go read it, and come back! Taming the beast After the toxicity of Dinophysis was revealed, the incentives for establishing permanent cultures in laboratory conditions were high. Once mastered, lab cultures of microorganisms are a great asset for…
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Phycoplankton 