The sexual life of copepods

For those of you who haven’t read my post “Copepods: Good things come in small packages”, I recommend you do so before you delve into the exciting reading of this new one. In any case, for the laziest, copepods are small crustaceans of vital importance in marine food webs, as they are the food of many

Plankton, mussels with french fries, and diarrhea

The Belgians have the culinary tradition of eating mussels with French fries; it is all a matter of taste. In Catalonia we serve them alone, in sauce, or in paellas or other equally delicious dishes. Mussels, apart from being a gastronomic delight, available to everyone, are incredibly efficient filtering machines. In their daily activity, they

Global warming and plankton

Today, it is undeniable that the earth is warming at a faster rate than it should due to merely natural causes. From the anthropogenic point of view, that is to say purely human, one might think that nothing happens if the temperature rises a couple of degrees. We could even believe that global warming is

Are there carnivorous plants in the sea?

Whether because of Audrey from Frank Oz’s musical Little Shop of Horrors, or because of The day of the Triffids of John Wyndham’s, or even because of the little venus fly trap plants sold in the flower shops, everybody knows what carnivorous or mixotrophic plants are. You may even have tried to grow one at home, probably

What can plankton do for you?

Copepods: Good things come in small packages

Imagine a group of organisms more abundant than insects; so abundant that if we place them in a row touching each other by the antennas one could reach the sun and return. That they were the main source of food for fish, to the point that without them there would probably be none left in

The rhythms of plankton

The dichotomy between day and night drives most rhythms in nature. The sun activates photosynthesis and with it, thousands of biochemical, physiological, and ethological processes. Humans sleep mostly at night, but many beasts thrive in the dark. During the night we see the moon, which also has its rhythms around 28-29 days. The duration between

THE FOUR SEASONS OF PLANKTON

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, composed in 1721, are among the most famous classical music works of all time. By listening to each of the concerts, we instinctively move into nature in all its splendor and severity. In the same way, plankton live and vibrates in response to the sound of the seasons in a harmonious way

The role of the ocean mitigating climate change

Here, I present you a video I made explaining the role of the ocean mitigating climate change and how does the biological pump works. This should be complementary of the post The biological pump and the role of ocean plankton in mitigating global warming I hope you enjoy it. Albert

Zooplankton’s most feared enemy

They are beautiful, they may be smart, we want to protect them, but from the perspective of our tinny friends they are terrifying. The whales! I hope you enjoy my weekend’s drawing 🙂 An average-sized humpback whale can eat 2000-2500 kg of krill each day during the feeding season in cold waters (about 120 days).