@ambonacolta.bsky.social and I co-hosted (and gave talks in) a special symposium for @protistologyopen.bsky.social today. It was super fun to put this together, & glad all of these amazing scientists were able to join us!! @mixotrophe.bsky.social

ISOP-sponsored symposium on protistan symbioses across the Tree of Life went fantastic! Thanks all contributors (Ondrej, Gillian, and @mixotrophe.bsky.social) and the best co-host, @nicolecoots.bsky.social! #ProtistsOnSky @protistologyopen.bsky.social

#SymbioSky #CoralReefs

Congrats Kay on passing her undergraduate honors thesis defense today! So lucky to have had such a hardworking mentee for the last 18 months! 🎉

Tune in this week to the DinoSphere seminar to hear Rocío Mozo Muñoz (IBE-UPF-CSIC) talk about her work in phylogenomics of Symbiodiniaceae! 📆 16 April - 9AM CEST 🔗 tinyurl.com/5fje3s55 @ehehenberger.bsky.social @manondemulder.bsky.social @chandnibhickta.bsky.social Norico Yamada, Edmée Royen

A nice tribute to Frank John Rupert “Max” Taylor by Juan F. Saldarriaga and Rowan Haigh. Feel free to share your own remembrances in the comments. #protistsonsky @dackslabecb.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

There is a lot of undescribed prokaryotic diversity in existing whole-genome metagenomic data! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Attending Protistology Open? Check out @nicolecoots.bsky.social & I's ISOP-sponsored symposium "The Symbiotic Continuum across the Tree of Life" (April 20th @ 11 AM)! We have an amazing lineup of speakers including Ondřej Pomahač, @mixotrophe.bsky.social, & Gillian Gile #ProtistsOnSky #Symbiosis

We all know #fungi are the dominant microbial #eukaryotes in #forest #soils… or are they really? In our new paper, we revisited 51 forest metatranscriptomes from 4 European and North American forest regions - and found that protistan predators outshine fungi in activity!

We tested the efficacy of semi-permeable capsules to capture protists from cultures and environmental samples using the Onyx from @atrandi.bsky.social. Tremendous effort from everyone in the lab and led by Marco Fantini and Nik Brask - check out the videos here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Nice article in National Geographic about the work of my colleagues at @ucdavis.bsky.social -- @dranyabrown.bsky.social and @rachaelabay.bsky.social www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/... Survival of the most cooperative

Predator-prey dynamics of Vibrio cholerae on chitin suggest an alternative mode of biofilm formation in marine snow conditions #ISMEJournal from Carey Nadell academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Finally, @baileywallace.bsky.social and colleagues show that temperate and filamentous bacteriophages are significantly associated with stony coral tissue loss disease, a disease of unknown pathogen. Lysogenic conversion would make it really hard to detect pathogens! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new article on #protist global distributions combining the #Mixoplankton and #metaPR2 databases with newly revised functional annotations. rdcu.be/fanlx

New paper alert!

Excited to share our lab's new paper in Current Biology featuring MS student Sydney Schultz's work. We show that a polar alga carries large amount of giant viral DNA in its genome, and many of the viral genes respond to stress - with implications for host adaptation. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Single-cell transcriptomics reveals a new marine parasite: Characterization and distribution of Rozellomyces from the Gulf of Alaska ⛴️🔬🌊 Congrats Adarsh and all co-authors: @protistwtmostest.bsky.social, Gordon, @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social, and Naomi! #ProtistsOnSky

New #ISEPpapers! Single‐Cell Transcriptomes and Phylogenomic Analysis of Uncultivated #Oxymonads: Morelia Trznadel et al. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... #Protists #Microbes #Evolution #TreeOfLife #Phylogeny

Hi folks, there is a high likelihood I will be recruiting 1-2 PhD students to start in Spring 2027. Trying to get the word out early; please share broadly with your networks and encourage your students to reach out early. Info can be found on my webpage. fuesslab.wp.txstate.edu/opportunities/

My new spiritual eukaryote is ciliate in Si helmet swimming towards North pole ⚔️. Definitely an amazing reading from Bolzoni et al. "Magnetoreception in a freshwater ciliate arises from endosymbiosis." 10.1038/s41467-026-70462-8 for #protistsonsky

A heads down approach will not save science. We need to speak up, live our values, and demand integrity. www.statnews.com/2026/03/12/n...

Check this FRESH REVIEW about how the #wildlife #microbiome can shape infection ecology and #parasite #evolution led by @jingdi.bsky.social - which I got to contribute for! 🕺 NOW OUT in Molecular Ecology 🦋🐸🐝🐻🦠 #MicroSky #SymbioSky @ubcbiodiversity.bsky.social @science.ubc.ca

A new era for #ONT amplicon sequencing? We show that #ONT #amplicon sequencing now achieves accuracy sufficient for #ASV resolution using standard Illumina-based pipelines. We validated this by sequencing identical amplicons on #ONT and #PacBio. @nanoporetech.com www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

If you are protist enthusiast early in your career and you want hands-on training in collecting and handling protists for all your research goals, please apply to join us in Roscoff for a week-long course this summer! opbc.sciencesconf.org

Protist lovers: Please apply for a week of rhapsody! Learn by doing: MicroSEA (Microbial Sea Eukaryotes) course is a one-week, field-based summer school to train early-career researchers in the diversity, ecology, and single-cell biology of marine protists. opbc.sciencesconf.org #protistsonsky

Great to see this paper in all its glory online: link.springer.com/article/10.1... A huge effort from Gordon and the team at @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social! Phylogenomic tree of Cercozoa based on single-cell transcriptomes from 100 uncultured cells @ubcbotany.bsky.social @science.ubc.ca

Coral microbiomes as reservoirs of unknown genomic and biosynthetic diversity www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs 🌊

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Before he passed away in 2021, Tom Cavalier-Smith had drafted parts of his autobiography. It's now 'published' because Gáspár Jékely put a lot of effort in! Please enjoy and share: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

If you're looking for some fun weekend reading, check out our recent review on marine apicomplexans, out now in ICB (@sicbjournals.bsky.social)! #ProtistsOnSky

have you ever seen 𝘊𝘩𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘺𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘴 doing a perfect breast stroke? here you go... #ProtistsOnSky

It was great being involved in this paper. Check it out for an update on what’s going on in the world of Cyanidiophyceae biology!

New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Temporal rhythms govern coral-symbiont relationship Changes in gene expression & microbiome of reef-building coral & algal symbionts through diel cycles. Dawn is time for host molecular activation; microbes shift metabolic contributions between day/night www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

🗣️Protist friends! I'm looking to put together a list of key protistology resources for new students joining the lab. What are some of your favourite papers??? 🧪 #protistsonsky

"Research and management of coral reefs is increasingly shifting from a coral-centric approach toward more holistic strategies that consider the roles of the algal symbiont and other microbes in coral health." #SymbioSky #ProtistsOnSky

Cool perspective piece by @chancx.bsky.social on our recent pub in Cell Host & Microbe. Read it here 👉 tinyurl.com/33uxf3ts

Exciting announcement! My new department is launching a postdoc fellowship in quantitative biology. Fellows will be co-advised by two Bio faculty, one that is quant focused (not me) and one that is not (me???). I would love to co-sponsor a postdoc and build a collaboration so please reach out!

Applications are now open for our EMBO Practical Course in Computational and Experimental Microbiomics! 🧫🔬🖥️ meetings.embo.org/event/26-mic... Come learn a mix of computational and experimental microbiome techniques from 6-8th July in beautiful Bath, UK! Registration Deadline: 11 May 2026

Curaçao sampling trip 2026 🇨🇼. Such a beautiful island 🏝️ 🪸🐠

This is a beautiful case of how real science happens & serious scientists work. Kudos to both set of authors: “This has been a humbling experience, but one that speaks to the self-correcting nature of the scientific endeavor.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

To my #protistsonsky and 🦑friends, I am co-organizing this meeting: "Midwater Science and Engineering Community" (MidSEC) Conference. If you work with or are interested in midwater protists (radiolaria, foram, deep water coccolithophores, etc) (or animals) it may be of interest to you! midsec.info

Contrasting physiological adaptation strategies to natural environmental change in two Red Sea coral holobionts academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs

open.spotify.com/episode/1iYc... #ProtistsOnSky

A great resource from Maia and friends! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Here is a myxomycete plasmodium that I isolated off a wet leaf onto the bottom of a vented flask. Realtime phase microscopy. #ProtistsOnSky

Really cool work from Rossin et al. 🪸 More evidence supporting SCTLD as a disease of the symbionts 🟠

@michaeltconnelly.bsky.social et al. sequenced 342 Pocillopora coral samples from the Eastern Tropical Pacific, revealing four distinct species; algal symbiont community profiling identified dominant symbionts that varied according to host species. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf235 #genome #evolution

Excited to share that @michelle-hauer.bsky.social's paper with @katiekliermicrobe.bsky.social @maggielangwig.bsky.social @karthik-a.bsky.social on phage interactions with chemosynthetic symbionts was published today. #NSF and @schmidtocean.bsky.social supported. academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...