iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Here's a fun thing! Prof. Mike Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social has created Phylodiet, an app that reveals "How Much of the Tree of Life is on your plate": mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/ap... Enter your meal, and see how the ingredients are related. #phylogeny #TreeOfLife #Evolution

mjhickerson.github.io

Phylodiet

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Yup, that's Stylonychia. For identification to species, we'd need to rule out subgenus Metastylonychia (which requires a clear view of the macronucleus).

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

No, it's likely a stylonychine (in the family Oxytrichidae). However, identification of hypotrichs almost always requires a view of ventral cirri, which we don't see.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Nice! It has marginal cirri, so it's in the subclass Hypotrichia, not Euplotia. We don't see the distribution of cirri on the cell, so can't reliably ID below subclass.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

One species in our new paper is named after Joe Purdon, an Ontario farmer who nurtured the woodland fen now known as the Purdon Conservation Area. He focused on the Showy Lady’s Slipper orchid, but conserved a whole ecosystem, including his new namesake: Galeripora purdoni. #orchids #peatlands

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

In Montreal to launch my new collection of poems. It has an amoeba on the cover! vehiculepress.com/shop/we-drov... Great to reconnect with old poetry friends, and meet some new ones.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

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.🦹‍♀️

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

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.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

😆 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.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

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".

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

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!

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Reposted by Bruce Taylor

Vasily Zlatogursky @zlatogursky.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

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

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

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.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

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

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Reposted by Bruce Taylor

Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

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...

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

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.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Scanning electron microscope 🙂

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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". 😄

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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).

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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!

arcella.nl

Microworld – world of amoeboid organisms

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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. :)

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

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).

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Reposted by Bruce Taylor

Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

iNat getting cozier with generative AI, not sure that's going to play well with everyone.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Ugh. When know-it-all "large language model" AI starts pontificating on things it has read about but can't actually see, the results can be ludicrous. See the attached chatGPT fail, from a reddit thread.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Oddly, the "warts" are hardened globules of organic cement, and the amoeba itself is not seen here. In this species, the globules of cement are laid down as thick rings, perforated with a single hole. In some testate amoeba species, the rings are thinner, with a kind of latticework inside.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Anyone who has watched a hypotrich ciliate scooting around on its cirral legs, ducking for cover when startled, then stepping out to seize some fast-moving prey...has to at least THINK about cognition. ;) An old hypothesis, killed by electron microscopy: www.itcamefromthepond.com/2013/11/29/t...

itcamefromthepond.com

The Rise and Fall of the Ciliate “Cytobrain” – It Came from the Pond

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Thanks! I came to protistology from poetry. So, some of these things are still somewhat new to me, as well. ;)

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

It's usually just referred to as "organic cement". I'm curious to know more about these fossil protists!

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

The glue is secreted in vesicles, generated in the Golgi apparatus and deposed as these discrete blobs...forming a matrix which varies in appearance from one species to the next. In some, the solidified matrix is quite fancy (see the attached pic of cement in Lesquereusia spiralis).

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Yes, they're held in place by globules of organic cement (two of the pics show closeups). They seem to use whatever diatoms happen to be blooming, and will mix species readily. Not sure if C. bacillariarum preys on diatoms, but some arcellinids do. An old video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2t6...

youtube.com

Cylindrifflugia bacillariarum (=Difflugia bacillariarum)

YouTube video by Bruce Taylor

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Thanks, Andrew! It's a pretty amazing group of organisms.

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Arcellinid amoebae that build "agglutinated" shells tend to like siliceous materials...especially quartz when it's available. Where minerals are scarce, they'll happily build with diatoms, chrysophyte cysts, etc. This species is particularly good at it! 😎

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Reposted by Bruce Taylor

reitetsugou.bsky.social @reitetsugou.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Zone of inhibition always makes me feel so excited about science lol

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