New preprint: We studied the population dynamics of Arctic #phytoplankton and #mycoplankton and found evidence for chytrid-mediated diatom bloom termination. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Congrats @paulinethome.bsky.social #protists #protistsonsky #algae #diatoms #chytrids

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Multiple evolutionary routes to cytoskeletal arborization revealed by the rhizarian amoeba Filoreta ramosa

Discovery of an adhesion GPCR regulating mating in choanoflagellates, by Alain Garcia de las Bayonas & Nicole King. Absolutely stunning work - choano cell biology is going next level www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Dear fellow researchers. I think we need to discuss this: www.newscientist.com/article/2532... While peer review is flawed, and while preprints are a great way to share data before publication, as a community we mustn’t trade rigour for hype. This paper was peer reviewed and rejected.

Had a blast putting this video abstract together with colleagues for @zjmaggiexu.bsky.social story in @currentbiology.bsky.social on how the "vampire cell" P. collini builds the perfect feeding trap 👀. Be sure to check out the full paper: www.cell.com/current-biol... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikzm...

Very cool! Amazing to learn how the very first predation in Earth history looked!

I have a problem stopping watching this...

1/11 🤩Sooooo happy to see this work on a new new group #algae. Looks like #centrohelids - predatory ancient eukaryotic lineage sometimes harbor vertically-inherited plastids from #dictyochophytes. Amazing work, @annewalraven.bsky.social, glad to be on board! More below:

Tiny unicellular #eukaryotes, big #biomaterial inspiration. Excited to share our Nature Communications study showing that tintinnid ciliates build their chemical- and heat-resistant shells from self-assembling proteins we call Tintinnidorins. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #protistsonsky 1/3

I'm excited to share that one of the main outcomes of my PhD research was published in @pnas.org this week!! Thank you to everyone involved in this work! @johandecelle.bsky.social More details here: lnkd.in/emwBFun3 Thanks to @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social for covering our work: lnkd.in/ex9GmJNe

Meet Holdonia, a new member of the chrompodellid clade. Found clinging to a polychaete, this little guy reveals that similar patterns in plastid reduction have occurred independently across chrompodellid and related lineages. @rhizalyssa.bsky.social @pjkeelinglab.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2t25xb6z

Nucleariids are a group of single-celled amoeboid organisms which are related to Fungi. One species, Fonticula alba, was initially classified as a type of slime mould, because it behaves like slime moulds by forming multi-cellular aggregates and fruiting bodies 🧪 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Welcome to blue sky @masha-daugavet.bsky.social and folks studying HGT, especially in #Fungi - take a note

I'm literally a professional crustacean scientist, but in motion this looks more like a @realgdt.bsky.social fantasy creature! Btw it's swimming butt-up. Paddles are back legs, long ones are front legs. Weird branched stuff is its food royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Not all cells do the whole membrane blebbing thing the same. Some of them get weird about it. This is a single cell videoed through a DIC microscope. #CellBiology

"microtubule feeding tentacles"!

Very excited to be sharing our new paper, just out in Nature Cell Biology! The big question we investigate: How do migrating cells put their front 🔴 and back 🔵 in the right place?

@chrisgirardb.bsky.social Christine’s first manuscript is on BioRXiv! She investigated the CCDC40 protein in trypanosomes with superb expansion images and unexpected findings! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

10/10 Perhaps aggregation is not an evolutionary dead end after all! Perhaps it was one of the evolutionary experiments from which animal multicellularity emerged. Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @icreacommunity.bsky.social #AnimalOrigins #Evolution #Multicellularity

It is very hard to image small cells🔍 To combat this,we are doing Expansion Microscopy (ExM), a method which enlargens cells and makes it possible to see even small structures with high resolution! Here are ~4x expanded Rhodomonas cells from our latest ExM session😄 #ExM #protist #scicommUU26

Expanded Karenia papiloniaceae with a zoom to his nice crystalline chromosomes 😍

The first paper from #theLifeOfRetaria is out! doi.org/10.1002/bies... This was a very fun and enriching process, as it has been the last 2 years of our Seminar Series 🤩 #protistsonsky

Did you know that Hexamita nelsoni occurs in blue mussels? Now you know 😂 see our paper here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #protistsonsky

If you want to read a cool story today, look no further: A billion-year-old bacterial machinery replicates plastid DNA and supports kleptoplastidy #protistsonsky www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Arcellinids are just like you and me www.instagram.com/reel/DYulmB7... www.instagram.com/tardibabe

We are looking for candidates to fill a PhD position in Grenoble, France. Please share with anyone interested in microbial symbioses! #dinoflagellate #symbiosis www.linkedin.com/posts/johan-...

I'm looking for an enthusiastic student to join my team as a PhD candidate on archaeal genome evolution 🦠💻 Work in beautiful Utrecht, at @binfutrecht.bsky.social, an international group full of caring, amazing scientists, and with frequent cake breaks! www.uu.nl/en/organisat... Please share! 🙏

A fossil nervous system meets modern neurobiology. We found that a living comb jelly preserves neural architecture remarkably similar to those inferred from Cambrian fossils over 500 million years old 🤩. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy #FluorescenceFriday all! 🔬 First Chlamydomonas experiment/U-ExM image from my lab. Haven't worked on these beautiful little cells since grad school 😍 #memories #cilia

Our next DinoSphere seminar will be June 18th at 9 AM PDT / 6 PM CEST hosting Jana Pilátová and @gracezhong.bsky.social 🪱 Grace Zhong: Symbiont mobility in a dinoflagellate–acoel worm symbiosis 🪩 Jana Pilátová: Eyespots as photonic mirrors in Symbiodiniaceae More details on tinyurl.com/43uckr2w!

And now it's out! Happy that PNAS selected for the cover this SEM image snapped by @samjlord.bsky.social, one of the most evocative visualizations of Euplotes that I have ever encountered. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Stay tuned for what is shaping up to be some fascinating follow-up in the lab...

Pentapartite symbiotic system in #Legendrea loyezae by @filiphusnik.bsky.social & co. doi.org/10.21203/rs.... #SymbioSky #protistsOnSky

I wrote a thing on our current #ERC Consolidator project PlastidOrigin. Also the tree of eukaryotes is free to use, DM me if interested in a png version #protistsonsky edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader...

My lab is currently looking for a postdoc interested in phylogenomics to work with our group on PhyloFisher. Please reach out if you or anyone you know is interested. evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

Interested in working on the evolution of photosynthetic endosymbioses? Come join us! I have 2 open positions in my new group @cemess.bsky.social in Vienna 3yr postdoc info: tinyurl.com/4emkjpn4 4yr PhD info: tinyurl.com/mtxmsjpy Apply by 1st June! Please share/repost #Protists #Symbiosis #PhD

I have a bit of a problem with protist having both cilia and flagella at the same time, but still love these comics and gladly reposting it for #protistsonsky to see 😍

Surprising view on the #TreeOfLife in 2026, preprint by Li & Zhang doi.org/10.64898/202.... "Organism-Environment Topological Interfaces Drive the Origination of Organismal Form". #protistsonsky might respectfully disagree I suppose 😱

Thank you, Lisa for making and sharing these clips. Can I just say that this remarkably detailed 3D model was generated by @kakanikatija.bsky.social and her group *minutes* after we observed the animal in the water. Digital specimens are here.

GOOD NEWS! Our BRILLIANT Red-ALERT CDT (@redalertcdt.bsky.social) has funding for one more home studentship at the University of Bath so we're re-advertising this project! New deadline: May 18th Come explore protist and invertebrate diversity with us!

🌊 Exciting #PhDPosition in #PlanktonEcology at the University of Koblenz, Germany! Work on marine protists with a mix of 🔬 wet lab and 💻 bioinformatics in a 3-year, 60% position. 📅 Apply by 20 May 2026 Please repost/share 🙌 Link: tinyurl.com/yu27knau #Protists #MicrobialEcology #PhD #Ecology

What? Diatom plastids in sea urchin eggs? Check out, #protistsonsky

What if you got to work with some of your best friends on a science project? I can't publish how fun this was, but I can show you the data (🧵)! Last week, we posted our second neutrophil swarming paper to bioRxiv and I wanted to post my favorite videos here~ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our latest work on shape-programmable tissues is out in @science.org. By positioning topological defects in cellular nematics, we encode frustrated 2D force fields that relax into predictable 3D shapes. Collaboration with Marino Arroyo’s lab, led by @pauguillamat.bsky.social at @ibecbarcelona.eu.

This is .wild. !

Crab evolution is so cool. Don’t mess with things that look like rocks in tide pools!!

A holy Harpacticoida with a diatom halo. 😇 #marineplankton #plankton #copepod 🦑

Check out our new release on BioRxiv co-lead by @pm-mueller.bsky.social 👉 rb.gy/lnrizk special🙏 to Severine Kunz #MDC @leventallab.bsky.social @andimicroscopy.bsky.social @ewerslab.bsky.social and Kedar Narayan @NCI CCR VolumeEM Are the days of discovering new cellular structures over?? /1

New #ISEPpapers #preprint by @deemteam.bsky.social: Re-evaluating the eukaryotic Tree of Life with independent phylogenomic data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Protists #Microbes #Evolution #Eukaryotes #TreeOfLife #Phylogeny #Phylogenomics #Bioinformatics #Algae

nice Vanella!