@tardibabe: These living mandalas are green algae named Gonium 💚 I found them couple months ago, in my backyard! Gonium algae can be found around the globe in freshwaters like ponds, rivers, soils, paddy fields and rainwater pools and they love water sources that are rich in nutrients. Gonium colonies are usually composed or 4, 8, 16 or 32 cells and are flattened. Each individual algae forming these colonies are enclosed in a gelatinous sheath that are all linked together to form one colony! Gonium colonies have the ability to swim toward a light source helped by each individual possessing two equal flagella and one stigma, also called the eye spot. Flagella beat together toward the light source guided by the eye spot so the colony can produce sugars by photosynthesis. The eyespot is a photoreceptor structure responsible for detecting light and guide the movements of the flagella! Gonium is part of the Volvocine green algae group which includes Volvox, a beautiful spherical colony that you might’ve seen in my previous posts! Gonium colonies, along with other Volvocines such as Gonium and Volvox, would appear to be among the first steps into multicellularity, which would’ve happened around 230 million years ago. In contrast, multicellularity in animals would’ve emerged 600 to 950 million years ago and in multicellular terrestrial plants around 750 million years ago! In fact, multicellularity has independently evolved many times since life on earth has developed including in plants, animals, fungi, cyanobacteria, amoeba and in brown, red and green algae 😄 All videos were taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam ultra adapter 🔬 #fyp #microscope #mandala #art #science

Chloé Savard

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Region: CA

Saturday 19 November 2022 18:06:40 GMT