{"id":953,"date":"2025-10-31T13:01:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/?p=953"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:01:20","slug":"microscopic-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/?p=953","title":{"rendered":"Microscopic Monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8Qg_rRKviio\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not all algae in <strong>Bigelow Laboratory\u2019s National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota (NCMA)<\/strong> collection are peaceful plankton. Some have a <em>monster<\/em> appetite!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Oxyrrhis marina<\/em> is a heterotrophic marine algae that doesn\u2019t make its own food like most other autotrophic algae. Instead, it <em>hunts <\/em>it. Think: Michael Myers in pursuit of a king-sized candy bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this algae\u2019s meal of choice isn\u2019t a sugary confection. Instead, it\u2019s hunting down <em>Dunaliella tertiolecta<\/em>, another algae in the collection. To keep <em>Oxyrrhis<\/em> happy and prevent it from turning on its own kind, curators \u201cfeed\u201d it fresh D<em>unaliella<\/em> every few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out this eerie microscope footage of<em> Oxyrrhis<\/em> in action, and enjoy our very own Halloween horror story from the microscopic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From everyone at Bigelow Laboratory: <strong>happy Halloween<\/strong>!\u00a0\ud83c\udf83<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not all algae in Bigelow Laboratory\u2019s National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota (NCMA) collection are peaceful plankton. Some have a monster appetite!\u00a0 Oxyrrhis marina is a heterotrophic marine algae that doesn\u2019t make its own food like most other autotrophic algae. Instead, it hunts it. Think: Michael Myers in pursuit of a king-sized candy bar. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-ocean-function","tag-maine","tag-microalgae"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":955,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/currents.bigelow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}