found this lil guy in a sand sample recently 😍🦑 #protistsonsky

Our 2nd heterotrophic #Paulinella culture! Really proud of this one. After days at the microscope picking cells, I finally got it growing happily :) #protistsonsky

Made some cyanotype prints from a figure I pulled from @sandinmm.bsky.social 's 2019 paper on the morpho-molecular classification of Nassellaria. #protistsonsky Those SEMs are so stunning, they were just begging to be turned into art! doi.org/10.1016/j.pr...

Gave a talk about mixotrophy earlier this month to the Thetis Island Nature Conservancy. My postdoc has been so 100% focused on research that I almost forgot how much fun scientific outreach can be!!! 🤩

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Genomes of nitrogen-fixing eukaryotes reveal an alternate path for organellogenesis #protistsonsky

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

Currently geeking out over this recent paper from the @mixotrophe.bsky.social lab!: Environmental Fluctuations Promote Host Reward Strategies That Maintain Partner Diversity in Multispecies Mutualisms By Bethany LF Stevens et al. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Was literally just panicking about this over the weekend 💩

I love the way they move

Anybody know what this marine invert is? It's from an epipelagic plankton net tow in the middle of the Atlantic #invertID

Thrilled to have won @nature.com 2025 #ScientistAtWork photo competition! 🧪🐳📷 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

My friends in the Life of Retaria group decided to make a podcast! In the first episode, they interview @fabnot.bsky.social about his journey as a scientist. I loved the first episode, hope you do too! @juliemeilland.bsky.social @sandinmm.bsky.social et al. thelifeofretaria.github.io/podcast.html

testate amoebae are my fave 🤩

Congrats @sandinmm.bsky.social et al, very nice paper: www.cell.com/current-biol... #protistsonsky

Why do some planktonic protists develop a gelatinous matrix? We suggest that this original adaptation is a strategy to cope with ocean oligotrophy: doi.org/10.1111/1462... Led by @n-llopis-m.bsky.social, and thanks to all co-authors, I'm very happy to finally see it out! #protistsonsky

Pause for a minute to appreciate the valiant Program Officers still at NSF, who are doing their utmost to preserve what they can. They’re in the stinking rotting belly of the beast, laboring on our behalf. ❤️❤️❤️❤️ to them

It's an incredibly depressing time to be an American scientist

Lichen collage. Northwest Territories, Canada.

These guys got the first living footage of the Indonesian coelacanth! Amazing work. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Algal symbiont diversity and host fitness variation in the amoebozoan photosymbiosis 🦠 by Yamagishi et al. @jeukmicro.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

🚨🧵 Out now in ISMEJ (@ismepublications.bsky.social)! We find abundant corallicolid sequences within bearded fireworms (𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘢) across reefs and years in Curaçao 🇨🇼! 🪱🪸 This is the first report of corallicolids inside a non-anthozoan host! #ProtistsOnSky #MicroSky #SymbioSky #Corals

Nitrogen isotopes are a promising tool to reconstruct symbiosis in planktic foraminifera! Check out our latest paper: bg.copernicus.org/articles/22/...

A dream come true: the first expansion microscopy images of C. flexa 🤩 Generated by Mylan & Uzuki who learned from the best (@hiralshah.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @dudinlab.bsky.social). We will learn so much from these!

New lab preprint! Unveiling the Molecular Architecture of T Cells and Immune Synapses with Cryo-Expansion Microscopy (Cryo-ExM). A fantastic collaboration with Dr. Benita Wolf. Congratulations to all authors, especially Florent Lemaitre, for leading this amazing work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A spumellarian (Tetrapyle?) and its symbionts 😌 left: brightfield, middle: DAPI, right: symbiont FISH probes #ProtistsOnSky

Happy to share our last study led by @akrao.bsky.social published in @currentbiology.bsky.social, showing how a planktonic host steals and hijacks chloroplast and mitochondrion of a microalga using 3D subcellular imaging. Funded by @moorefound.bsky.social; @erc.europa.eu #Protistsonsky #SymbioSky

Trump's team backing down in front of Harvard should embolden EVERYONE to stand up to them. Do not comply in advance. Instead say "Fuck you, make me."

Towards community-driven visual proteomics! Excited to finally share this large-scale curated & annotated dataset of 1829 high-quality #cryoET tomograms of the little green alga that just keeps giving— Chlamydomonas! 🧪🧶🧬🌾🌊🌍 Preprint📜: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A short thread🧵👇

Stability of the cnidarian–dinoflagellate symbiosis is primarily determined by symbiont cell-cycle arrest By Lucy Gorman et al. 🤯 sounds cool as heck, gonna read this tonight !!! www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

fourth and final chapter of my PhD is out! 🚨 We used single cell metabarcode sequencing to describe the diversity of organisms associated with polycystine radiolarians near Bermuda. we found that polycystines associate with a really wide diversity of phytoplankton, compared to other radiolarians! 🤩

🚨New preprint out! We show that Arcella spp., a shell-bearing amoeba, controls the abundance of the filamentous bacterium Ca. Microthrix parvicella, the main culprit behind sludge bulking in wastewater treatment plants. Interested in applicability of protists? Read along! #protistsonsky #microsky 🧵👇

This week on the podcast I spoke with Matt Johnson about ciliates, kleptoplasty, mixotrophy, and the Grateful Dead! Found everywhere you get podcasts. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and rating the show! #scicomm open.spotify.com/episode/0jdh...

Yet to share our recent paper “Phylogenomic resolution of marine to freshwater dinoflagellate transitions” led by Mahara and @protistwtmostest.bsky.social. Includes work from two @science.ubc.ca undergraduates! 🤩 Freshwater dinoflagellates need more love! 💚 academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

Seattle, WA #sciencenotsilence

Grateful to be a part of it 🌞

The colors of Quadra Island 🤩

How many of my academic friends saw this? Pitt Pauses All PhD Admissions. www.wesa.fm/health-scien...

As a very small act of resistance, which is to continue creating reliable science content for non-scientists, I’ve decided to revive my podcast from 2022. The first episode of season 2 will be released on March 10th on all podcast platforms!

I lost my job at the National Science Foundation yesterday, along with 167 of my colleagues, including some dear friends. This was the best job I've ever had, and I thought it would be my last. The PI community has been sympathetic and supportive, without exception. I will miss working for you.

Firings are happening right now at the National Science Foundation. Essential staff are being cut. This isn’t about the budget. If it was, they’d be going after the military (17%) or state appropriations (38%). NSF is 0.7% of the federal budget. All federal employees make up only 4% of the budget.

More corallicolid data! 🪸 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Symbionts of predatory #protists are widespread in the oceans and related to animal pathogens #symbiosis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1931312825000277

International Day of Women and Girls in Science => Pioneers of Plankton Research! Priscilla Susan Bury (1799–1872): doi.org/10.1093/plan... Marie Lebour (1876–1971): doi.org/10.1093/plan... Sheina Marshall (1896–1977): doi.org/10.1093/plan... Easter Ellen Cupp (1904–1999): doi.org/10.1093/plan...

the third chapter of my PhD is now published! 🚨 We describe the protist symbiont diversity of the termite species Reticulitermes tibialis. This project was performed in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) which was super fun 😊 #protistsonsky authors.elsevier.com/a/1kaMa56A9x...

“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seeking to withdraw all papers involving its researchers that are being considered for publication by external scientific journals to allow for a review by the Trump administration” 🧪 www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

I had some time to look through my #microscope today and captured this Amoeba engulfing a ciliate. (MoticBA310e - Labcam Ultra/iPhone15) Enjoy the cycle of life in the #Microcosmos! #microscopy #cell #scicomm #biology #Science

Keeling Lab Writing Retreat on Quadra Island is going down this weekend. It's so beautiful here, can I stay? 😍

It is very easy to call your representatives’ offices. They have to log your calls and the call numbers are meaningful. You don’t even have to try to convince anyone; just call and tell them your concerns. They are there to represent you. Let them know what that means. www.usa.gov/elected-offi...

Wearing diatoms is a popular fashion choice among some groups

Interested in protist parasites? Want to learn some fun bioinformatics? Think this apicomplexan looks cool? Great! Come and do some protist genomics at @uniofbath.bsky.social! We're advertising a fully-funded PhD studentship open to UK & International applicants! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...