David J. Patterson–known to friends and colleagues as “Paddy”–is a major figure in eukaryote taxonomy, evolutionary protistology and biodiversity informatics. In the 42 years since his first paper was published (a nifty little study of habituation in Vorticella) he has done enough work for several ordinary careers. With various collaborators, he has added some 250…
Early last year, the mayor of Salzburg proudly announced the creation of a new conservation zone around this “globally unique ‘natural monument’”: The newly protected feature is not that rocky bluff, Festungsberg hill, or the 11th-century fortress that sits on top of it. It is the long, narrow puddle in the foreground. This is Krauthügel…
Ferry Siemensma is an independent researcher in the Netherlands, and a leading expert on several groups of amoeboid and heliozoan organisms. For the past two years he’s been building a website devoted to his favourite creatures: Microworld: world of Amoeboid Organisms. This was an ambitious project from the beginning, but over time it has gradually…
I’ve added a number to the title of this post, because I expect to make “Protist Homes” a regular feature. I had intended it to be an idea-free zone, devoted to uncomplicated wonderment (kind of like the tours of celebrity homes and stately residences on HGTV). But I know some ideas and research will creep…
The Last Eukaryote Common Ancestor–affectionately known to cellular evolution geeks as “LECA“– was almost certainly a predator. Later in the history of the lineage, certain eukaryotes would form permanent symbiotic alliances with photosynthetic bacteria, and once that occurred, some lucky cells could just bask in the sunshine, drawing energy from light with the help of…
As I was saying, we vertebrates tend to have a high opinion of the big clump of neurons that sits at one end of our spinal cord. And so we should: in creatures like us, that’s where the magic happens. The bigger the clump, the more cognitively versatile the organism; remove it, and the whole…
