
A budding crescent
I first encountered the wonders of the protist realm back in childhood, when a murky droplet of pond scum was revealed by the microscope to entail an alien world in its own right. It took another decade to discover there was a field and a community dedicated to these organisms, and I bade farewell to the study of more familiar big things. As a kid I was also fascinated by tales of exploration of the New World, as well as those of fantasy worlds. I was then sad that the age of surveying new landmasses on earth was over, and that human extraterrestrial adventures are unlikely to happen within our lifetimes. It seemed everything was discovered already. But that could hardly be further from the truth -- all that is necessary to begin one's own Age of Exploration is a new approach or perspective, and a healthy does of imagination. Since reality has conjured far more than the human mind alone ever could, science yields a way to write stories much wilder than fiction. All one needs to access the alien world of microbes around (and inside) them is a shift of scale by simple glass sphere.
I'm currently finishing up my undergraduate degree in Vancouver and in transition career-wise, hopefully to end up in graduate school soon. I was born in Russia (and speak the language) and spent most of my life in US and Canada. In addition to protists, I'm fascinated by evolution, including that of culture and languages, diversity and biology of cells and how they self-organise, linguistics and anthropology, particularly of the less talked-about cultures, sociology of science and plenty of totally random things that snag my attention.
Banner image was kindly post-processed and enhanced by my friend: an accomplished comic artist who goes by Achiru.

A budding crescent

Cyanobacteria meet again

Diatom on a stalk, in slime

Frivolous Photo Friday: Stockfish. And microbes, still!

Hints for Mystery Micrograph #02

The beauty of sewage
Microbiologists might comprise the vast majority of people who get excited about sewage and other putrid-smelling places. A sample of activated sludge or a treatment pond make wonderful presents for bacteriologists and protistologists alike.

Centrohelids: creatures of the sun

Loricas -- homely vessels of protists

Testate amoeba in a sea of bacteria

Bicosoeca -- flagellate in a wineglass

Frivolous Photo Friday -

Ghost of a Rotifer

An algal scene

Nuclear structure -- in DIC!

Frivolous Photo Friday: Mantid feasting on roach flesh

Mystery Micrograph #02

Plucked from obscurity: Microgromia, a living microbial spider web

Amoebae shelled and naked

Frontonia: dissecting a ciliate appetite

Three views of a diatom
Starting with something perhaps more familiar, like a diatom, here I wanted to show an example of what different optical sections can reveal about an object in the microscope.

Mystery Micrograph revived, v2.0 chapter 1

Some sights about the microbial world
Back! Well, trying to — long story short, life got in the way of blogging for a while there, but of course I still really miss it. Won’t bore y’all with details (for now).

Pond water microforay: amoebae gone wild

Pond water `microforay': amoeba and ciliate sex gone horribly wrong