dumack.bsky.social
Aquatic Ecosystem Analyses 🦠Protists and their interactions.
http://kennethdumack.de
114 posts
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588 following
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Stunning images!
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Sure I did, thank you for you concern! We found a solution for this situation, which does not solve the issue on the large scale though...
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Important work!
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We are in the last steps in manuscript preparation. We have a great genome of a free-living core cercozoa. Just drop an email to my postdoc @huesnaoeztoprak.bsky.social she can share whatever you need.
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Was it you?! :D
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😂
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Huge issue! What is peer-review worth anymore then?
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Yes, for sure. From a legal perspective this is very bad. From my perspective: I am more concerned that peer-review processes are endangered. How sensical is it to please a review by ChatGPT instead of an actual evaluation of your work by a scientist? Sure I am not the first who encountered that.
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Joke aside: This is a serious issue endangering science itself!
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Why is the chloroplast not stained? It should have auto fluorescence, shouldn't it? Did you simply not catch the respective wavelengths?
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Huge success!
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Interesting, what kind of organisms are we talking about?
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Aw man, wish I would have been 20 years faster, haha
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Thanks!
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I didn't know they could grow fully submerged. Is this a species-specific trait or does this individual suffer and seek air exposure?
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See figure J from our new publication. Looks rather similar! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
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Funny! Then it is not Rhogostoma, but most likely related Trachyrhizium or Katarium. The latter was just described last year by us! Obviously there is a lot of unknown diversity, but I give you full confidence that it is Thecofilosea. You could culture it with algae as food.
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Hi, yes this is for sure Thecofilosea. Depending on where it comes from I could tell you more. First guess, it's Rhogostoma and it is hungry :D
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Yeah! I love his beard :D
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Read the full preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#protists #soilmicrobes #functionaltraits #microbialecology
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Whether you're tracking carbon flows, modeling soil resilience, or decoding microbial food webs - our trait-based framework for Amoebozoa opens new doors for functional ecology and comparative protistan evolution.
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Cercozoa communities are functionally stable across environments (at least in these traits). Amoebozoa, in contrast, show more variability - suggesting they respond more strongly to habitat differences. Big implications for understanding soil food webs.
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We applied the database to metatranscriptomes from soil, bark, and litter. Result? Trait profiles vary hugely by habitat. On bark, we found a spike in spore-forming and saprotrophic Amoebozoa. In soil: more pathogens.
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Our key finding: Cell size predicts feeding mode in Amoebozoa. Small cells = bacterivores. Big ones? They go after everything - bacteria, fungi, even animals. Cercozoa are selective irrespective of size, Amoebozoa more opportunistic. Size = strategy! Almost no specialized eukaryvores in Amoebozoa!
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Amoebozoa with Cercozoa (Rhizaria) are the main soil protist taxa, which is why we compared them: We found both functional redundancy and complementarity. They share forms—naked, testate, flagellated—but differ in habitats and feeding strategies. So far, not too suprising for experts, but see this:
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As you see in the image above, Amoebozoa can be macroscopic, or tiny, some bear elaborate shells, others lack them. What we can learn by comparing these traits?
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Protists are everywhere - but we lack tools to connect their taxonomic identity to what they do. Now, we provide trait data for >300 amoebozoan genera across 8 categories: nutrition, habitat, morphology, locomotion, size, spore formation, etc.
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Why is this interaction so special? Most protists can not consume large prey such as long bacterial filaments. However, we recently showed that Arcellinida use their shell to pull on (and sometimes rupture) large prey, see this thread for another paper: bsky.app/profile/duma...
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A video of the Arcella feeding on filaments crowns my updated website: www.kennethdumack.de
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Check out the full preprint, more details, figures, data, and videos here:
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Let’s bring eco-based management into wastewater treatment - starting with a humble amoeba.
#protists #ecology #microbiology #wastewater #WWTP #biocontrol #LotkaVolterra
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🧪 Our findings pave the way for full-scale WWTP trials. Could we seed Arcella or design systems to promote them? If successful, this could transform sludge management forever. Clean, cost-effective, and biologically sound.
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Impulse response modeling predicted: a boost in Arcella could suppress Ca. M. parvicella growth for up to 5 months. That’s a long-term, sustainable solution—no chemicals needed.
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Time-series analysis showed classic predator-prey dynamics. Lotka-Volterra in action! Peaks in Ca. M. parvicella are followed ~3–6 months later by peaks in Arcella. Predator lags prey, just like lynx and hare.
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Here is a time series of Arcella consuming about ten (!) bacterial filaments in about a minute. Since it feeds simultaneously on several filaments, Arcella feeds a filament every three (!) seconds. Mindblowing numbers. Voracious little critter!
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In microcosms, we added Arcella hemisphaerica to activated sludge and - boom - filamentous bacteria dropped significantly after 19 days. Predation confirmed via microscopy and video. Amoeba vs filament = mismatch!
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We used SEM to dig deeper: temperature affects both groups, but Arcella also independently affects Ca. M. parvicella abundance. The kicker? No such effect from rotifers, long thought potential biocontrol agents.
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Strong negative correlations between Arcella spp. and both filament density and Ca. M. parvicella. Suggests more Arcella = less filamentous bacteria. But is it causation or just a seasonal pattern?
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Over a decade of data from 4 German WWTPs, we saw clear seasonal cycles in microbial communities. Cold = high Ca. M. parvicella, warm = more Arcella. The two correlate negatively. Suspicious? We thought so too.
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Sludge bulking = nightmare for wastewater treatment plants. It’s caused by filamentous bacteria clogging systems, driving up costs, & reducing efficiency. Current treatments? Harsh chemicals with short-term effects. We asked: could a biological predator solve this?