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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 18d

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 · 29d

@tedersoo.bsky.social Thanks for an excellent overview of the subject...especially the lists of "benefits" and "shortcomings/risks", and the suggested amendments to codes.

Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Request PDF

Request PDF | On Aug 1, 2025, Leho Tedersoo and others published Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · 29d

Should codes of nomenclature be revised to allow DNA barcodes to serve as types for microbial taxa? Should sequence data be more widely used in taxon diagnoses? Here's a practical discussion of the issues. #ProtistsOnSky #taxonomy #systematics #MicrobialGenomics

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Request PDF

Request PDF | On Aug 1, 2025, Leho Tedersoo and others published Toward DNA-based taxonomy of prokaryotes and microeukaryotes | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Sep 8

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 · Aug 17

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 · Jul 27

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 · Jul 26

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 · Jul 26

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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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jul 24

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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Vasily Zlatogursky @zlatogursky.bsky.social · Jul 24

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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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

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.

Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

Call for Support: – About BHL

about.biodiversitylibrary.org

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

Call for Support: – About BHL

about.biodiversitylibrary.org

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jul 1

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

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Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · Jun 16

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 · Jun 14

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 · Jun 12

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 · Jun 12

Scanning electron microscope 🙂

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 11

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 · Jun 11

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 · Jun 11

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!

Microworld – world of amoeboid organisms

arcella.nl

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 11

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

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 11

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 · Jun 11

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 · Jun 11

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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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 10

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.

petnoodle @petnoodle.bsky.social · Jun 10

@inaturalist.bsky.social please explain what is being referred to here? What does "enhance[ing] biodiversity data by converting thousands of identification remarks into natural language explanations" mean. Won't that introduce a lot of nonsense into what is now an imperfect but important tool? 🌿 1/2

Screenshot from Twitter. iNaturalist says "We're so excited to be one of the organizations selected for this @Googleorg program! Learn more --" which then has a screenshot from Google.org saying "Meet the 20 incredible organizations selected for the Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI! These changemakers will use #GenAI to address pressing societal challenges, from education to community resilience. Discover their inspiring work: goo.gle/3TeKDog"

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 10

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 · Jun 9

Thanks, very interesting!

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 8

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...

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

www.itcamefromthepond.com

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Bruce Taylor @brucedstaylor.bsky.social · Jun 8

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