Microscopic marine plankton shells of all sizes and shapes line the front pages of Science Advances. With summer in full swing and lucky humans able to hit the beach, the science magazine is spotlighting a study led by researcher Yanli Lei of the Institute of Oceanography at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and researcher Matthew Clapham of the University of California, which focused on foraminifera.
Just like the dinosaurs, these tiny shells were largely victims of the Cretaceous-Tertiary crisis 65 million years ago. Except that unlike the former, some species survived, so much so that they even suffered other mass extinction crises. We come to wonder if there are foraminifera more threatened than others.
A “Lilliput effect”
To understand why, we must remember that a foraminifera is a marine planktonic organism formed by a single cell that produces a calcareous shell with several chambers. According to the researchers who conducted the new study, “When the environment is poor in oxygen and sulfide, oxygen cannot diffuse to the center of the shell of large foraminifera”indicates a presentation text. This work is all the more interesting since today we are observing a significant drop in oceanic oxygen.
