A few wickedly cool foram pictures...

Wickedly cool foraminifera? Really? Can a tiny marine plankton be cool? Yes, it can... The pictures below were taken this summer during our field season. Our summer research was, in a nutshell, amazing. We made a lot of observations and took a lot of pictures (and videos) of a species that is not widely studied in the lab, Neogloboquadrina dutertrei. Unlike its shallow dwelling cousins, this species doesn't have spines. The lack of spines makes their behavior in the lab MUCH different. Instead of floating in culture jars, they sink or 'go benthic' as we like to say. And, because they go benthic, our observations are also really different. We have images and videos of these forams eating, crawling on the bottom of their culture flask using their rhizopodial network to move, releasing gametes (going 'gam'), and adding chambers. Very cool stuff, indeed.

Below are a handful of my favorite pics. Click on the image to enlarge and read the caption.