Bruce Taylor

As if it weren't strange enough, this species also has a deep purple shell. I don't think anybody knows why.

Right?

Maybe both? "Kleptosquamous" amoebae commonly kill and eat their scale-providers, but I haven't seen Awerintzewia feeding (this population was mostly dormant, with plugged shell apertures). Some of the building materials are certainly scavenged...others were likely looted.🦹‍♀️

Weird word of the day: "kleptosquamy." The testate amoeba Awerintzewia cyclostoma steals scales from other amoeboid organisms to build its own shell. This one has robbed Quadrulella, Netzelia, various euglyphids, and even an Acanthocystis. Kleptosquamy! #amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #biology #nature

Thanks, Genoveva! I think I can do better, though. When I got home and reviewed the day's pictures, I realized I'd had the spot size set much too high.

😆 The ones in this subarctic population seem to deliberately choose the biggest and longest xenosomes they can find. It's as if they want to make themselves big, for some reason.

The amoeba Difflugia bacillifera builds its shell from things that contain silica, and it is not particular about the source. These ones have incorporated whole shells from another testate amoeba (Euglypha), along with diatoms, algal cysts and chunks of rock. #Amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #peatlands

Q. You're going through dishes of bogwater, hunting a certain thing. You find a bloom of a species you were collecting two months ago. You already have enough of those and don't need more. What do you do?

A. Collect them anyway! We wants it, we needs it, must have the precious! #ProtistsOnSky

Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Request PDF Request PDF | On Aug 1, 2025, Leho Tedersoo and others published Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

@tedersoo.bsky.social Thanks for an excellent overview of the subject...especially the lists of "benefits" and "shortcomings/risks", and the suggested amendments to codes.

Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Request PDF Request PDF | On Aug 1, 2025, Leho Tedersoo and others published Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Should codes of nomenclature be revised to allow DNA barcodes to serve as types for microbial taxa? Should sequence data be more widely used in taxon diagnoses? Here's a practical discussion of the issues. #ProtistsOnSky #taxonomy #systematics #MicrobialGenomics

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

I broke some shells of Galeripora artocrea, to look at their algal hostages...and accidentally created Pac-Man amoebae. #amoebae #peatlands #ProtistsOnSky

Amoebae in the family Arcellidae make their shells from secreted vesicles of organic material that become hexagonal when pressed together. When a shell is broken, we can see inside the stiff-walled "areoles" that give it strength and durability. #ProtistsOnSky #Amoebae #peatlands

I'm delighted by the idea of amoebae jetting around like squids. 😁 Sadly, it doesn't happen. Like other arcellinids (many of which also have spines on their shells) they crawl along the substrate with their pseudopods, which only protrude through the aperture and never through the "horns".

Nope, still haven't run into Legendrea! But I've mostly been poking around in submerged Scorpion-moss and Sphagnum.

I picked out as many as I could, in the time I had, and should have enough to sequence & measure. 😀 I kept the original jars, too, but after two days in the car I don't expect to see many more live ones.

Home again, now, with my boreal bog plunder!

Promethea = PROvora + MEteora + HEmimastigophora. The new supergroup, unifying previously “orphan” lineages with gene-rich mitogenomes. Position of #telonemids is still uncertain. #protistsonsky tinyurl.com/yk9xkt49

Last day in the field...time to wind down, pack up, put my stuff away. Of course, the sneaky shelled amoeba I've been chasing all week SUDDENLY decides to start blooming like crazy. #ProtistsOnSky #amoebae

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

Mine are for holding my glasses in place. So..secondary organs of sight, essentially. 😉

BHL contains the foundation of our understanding of biodiversity. 🌱 🌏 🦎 📖 🪱 🧪 🦉 There are countless researchers, educators, policy makers, fields, institutions, databases & species that rely on BHL. Please share our Call for Support as widely as you can: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran...

The quartz shards are embedded in some kind of organic cement, the exact makeup of which is not known (likely polysaccharides and proteins).

Oh, sorry. 😄 The shells are air-dried on carbon adhesive tabs mounted on SEM stubs, then sputtered with gold/palladium and put right in the machine.

Scanning electron microscope 🙂

Interestingly, organic cement in my populations of D. leidyi is similar to that of D. bacillariarum...but different from the cement of D. elegans shown in Todorov & Bankov. Meanwhile, D. bacillariarum has long been suspected of being identical to D. elegans. The taxonomy is "under construction". 😄

The Todorov & Bankov "atlas" is nice. It includes morphometric tables...very handy! D. leidyi was synonymized w/ D. elegans by Mazei & Warren in 2012. I'm skeptical, too, but shd add that consistently distinct phenotypes can be molecularly identical (see Hyalosphenia papilio paynei).

My copy of Leidy needs a new binding too. Customs agents slashed the spine with boxcutter while checking to see what kind of contraband I might be importing. The nearest modern equivalent to Cash, Wailes & Hopkinson, or Penard, is Ferry Siemensma's fabulous website!

Also...that's a really nice picture!

Yup, Difflugia leidyi...named for Joseph Leidy, who found a single specimen of the morphotype, which he didn't give a name. He was careful, that way, reluctant to create new taxa. :)

But why does an amoeba need horns on its shell? They're quite carefully made, with flat plates neatly glued around them (possibly scales from another organism). The spheres around the mouth are siliceous resting cysts of chrysophyte algae. #ProtistsonSky #MEvoSky #Amoebae #Peatlands

Exactly. I'm a curator on iNat, and have spent a LOT of time identifying eukaryotic microbes. I often write long explanations, with links to the literature. The idea that some bot could scrape and repackage my work is dismaying, even if it does a good job (which it probably won't).