Micro Empire from clemento on Vimeo.
Not every kind of life is large. In fact, the Earth is teeming with life forms so small we need a microscope to see them. Here are a few examples. The video above is life forms that live in water, both fresh like in lakes and rivers and salty like in the oceans. No information is posted with it though. I’m guessing the things we’re seeing are Plankton, specifically Copeopods, Arthropods, Cyano Bacteria, Diatoms, Nematodes and Algae. [Reefkeeping]
Plankton
Plankton (singular plankter) are any drifting organisms (animals, plants, archaea, or bacteria) that inhabit the pelagic zone of oceans, seas, or bodies of fresh water. That is, plankton are defined by theirecological niche rather than phylogenetic or taxonomic classification. They provide a crucial source of food to larger, more familiar aquatic organisms such as fish and whales. [Wikipedia]
Slime Molds
John Bonner is a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. He is an expert on Slime molds and is world renown for his work in understanding them.
Slime Molds are weird…
Slime molds are a remarkable lineage of amoebas that live in soil. While they spend part of their life as ordinary single-celled creatures, they sometimes grow into truly alien forms. Some species gather by the thousands to form multicellular bodies that can crawl. Others develop into gigantic, pulsating networks of protoplasm.
While naturalists have known of slime molds for centuries, only now are scientists really starting to understand them. Lab experiments are revealing the complex choreography of signals in some species that allows 20,000 individuals to form a single sluglike body. [New York Times]
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