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Bruce Taylor

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H-index: 34
Environmental science 33%
Engineering 13%
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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
@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

by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

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

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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Reposted by: Bruce Taylor, Patrick J. Keeling, Håvard Kauserud

zlatogursky.bsky.social
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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by Trevor A. Branch — Reposted by: Bruce Taylor, Wolfgang Kiessling

trevorabranch.bsky.social
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.
trevorabranch.bsky.social
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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by Trevor A. Branch — Reposted by: Bruce Taylor, Wolfgang Kiessling, John R. Hutchinson , and 4 more

trevorabranch.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
Mine are for holding my glasses in place. So..secondary organs of sight, essentially. 😉
1

Reposted by: Bruce Taylor

biodivlibrary.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
Scanning electron microscope 🙂
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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
Also...that's a really nice picture!
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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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.

Reposted by: Bruce Taylor

petnoodle.bsky.social
@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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
Thanks, very interesting!
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by Bruce Taylor

brucedstaylor.bsky.social
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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by Bruce Taylor

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

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