Haptophyte

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Today’s drawing was made possible by Plankton Net, “an open access repository for plankton-related information” that has about 15,000 images available to draw from (thus mitigating the artist’s need to use dubious substitutes as models for creatures that are too small to see).

This is a coccolithophore, representing the haptophytes, one of the branches of eukaryotes commonly known as algae.

The original SEM image is Coccolithus pelagicus ssp. braarudii by Richard Lampitt and Jeremy Young (© Jeremy Young, The Natural History Museum, London) https://planktonnet.awi.de/ CC BY 2.5

$$ Eubacteria

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Couldn’t find any MICROBES so I drew some cashews

Well, I admit it: I am just not as interested in microscopic organisms as visible ones, and thus am as guilty as anyone of taxonomic chauvinism. My excuse is that I like looking at things and drawing them without a microscope.

But I am working on it. I’m learning and/or relearning lots of fascinating stuff about Eubacteria and Archaea, two of the three domains of life. For one thing, some of them engulfed others of them to create the ancestors of the third domain, the more interesting one that includes everything from algae to avocado to fungi to fish to humans. Eukarya!, as Archimedes remarked, or something like that.

Some questions to ponder: Why is the hybrid domain called Eukarya, when “Euchaea” would have made a much better portmanteau of the words Eubacteria and Archaea? Also, how convincing are cashews as a stand-in for generic microorganisms?