If you tuned in last week, you'll know that diatoms produce one quarter of the air we breathe (and they produced this podcast's logo), but did you know that they can also be used to solve crimes???! Rather than spoiling too much by writing a long caption here, you should just press play to hear from Dr. Kirstie Scott, a forensic diatomist and one of the most interesting people I've spoken with. In this episode we discuss how certain environments have certain cells and how these cells can travel on clothes and in bodies. We also talk about different types of evidence, testifying in court, and many ways in which trace signatures of organisms in the environment can be used in to answer diverse research questions. If you like Dexter or Bones or true crime, this episode is for you!

Kirstie is a senior lecturer in forensic bioscience at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK where she specializes in diatom analysis. You can find her on Linkedin, Google Scholar, X, and Bluesky.

Here are some resources Kirstie recommends:

1. How microscopic algae are helping forensic teams catch criminals
2. Research article on marine diatoms as trace evidence indicators
3. Dead bodies can reveal details of their death through microscopic diatoms

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any institution.

Diatoms are beautiful (and weird). Dinoflagellates are weird (and beautiful). They are completely different organisms but both are protists that can both support whole ecosystems or cause devastating environmental hazards. However, only one of them inspired Alfred Hitchcock to make his famous movie, The Birds (listen to find out which). Both organisms can produce oxygen to help us breathe, and diatoms alone produce over 20% of the oxygen in the atmosphere. And sometimes dinoflagellates will ingest diatoms and use their innards to steal photosynthesis, creating a new type of organism called a "dinotom"! That was a very chaotic group of sentences but luckily this week we have Dr. Brittany Sprecher on the podcast who is an expert at diatoms, dinoflagellates, AND dinotoms. What a combo! We discuss a lot on this episode and you will come away learning all about the amazing research going on with these funky microbes.

Brittany Sprecher is a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. You can follow her work on Google Scholar.

Here are some links Brittany recommends to learn more about these protists:

1. Short Klaus Kemp diatom arranging documentary
2. Phytoplankton Identification guide (California coast)
3. Microorganisms PARODY video
4. "The algae that saved an astronaut's life" video
5. Wiki for Amoebophrya, the dinoflagellate parasite that infects other dinoflagellates
6. Bioluminescent waves in Monterey Bay
7. Bioluminescence vs. fluorescence video

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any institution.

Did you know that some organisms, from protists to sea slugs, steal photosynthesis? This week Dr. Matt Johnson is on the podcast to talk about his work on kleptoplasty, the process by which organisms steal plastids (photosynthetic organelles) from other organisms to become photosynthetic. These special cells with stolen plastids are mixotrophs, that is, they can both eat food and produce their own from solar energy. Matt discusses why kleptoplasty and mixotrophy are special processes that aren't as rare as we might think and how they affect the ocean and planet. He also talks about ciliates, a very enigmatic group of protists that he uses to study mixotrophy. And listen all the way through for a crash course on the Grateful Dead!

Matt is an associate scientist with tenure at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. You can follow his work on his Google Scholar page or website.

To learn more about ciliates, other protists, and kleptoplasty:

1. Foissner user-friendly guide to ciliate identification (1996)
2. Open source protist illustrations by Keeling and Eglit (2023)
3. Nat Geo "Solar-Powered Sea Slugs" article

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any institution.

Newsflash! Urine is not sterile! This week we have Owen Hale on the podcast to talk about the urinary tract microbiome, which is really understudied. We discuss which bacteria live inside us, what they do, why so many people get UTIs, and what urinary tract bacteria can tell us about evolution more broadly. Owen also points out that because UTIs affect women so frequently, this is one of the few systems in biomedical science where females have been studied more than men, and what we can learn from these types of studies. He also explains why UTIs are political and some surprising results from his own research.

Owen is a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University. You can follow his work on X (@owenmicro) or Google Scholar.

Here are some resources relevant to this episode:

1. A 2020 review paper called "Advances in Understanding the Human Urinary Microbiome and Its Potential Role in Urinary Tract Infection" by Neugent et al.
2. "Mutation Rates: How Low Can You Go?" by Sniegowski and Raynes
3. Tee wikipedia page for the drift-barrier hypothesis. This link is easier to read than the journal articles...

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any institution.

Bryophytes are an ancient group of plants that include hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. They are the evolutionary link between land plants and the green algal ancestors that plants evolved from. But bryophytes are also really interesting in their own right and they are very understudied so it is lucky that I got to chat with an expert bryologist! This week, Blair Young discusses what bryophytes look like, where to find them, and why we study them. Blair is a PhD student at Rutgers University in the Struwe lab. She is also the assistant curator at the Chrysler herbarium and a field surveyor for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. You can follow her on instagram (@polarblairx). If bryophytes are interesting to you, check out these useful resources Blair has provided that will help you get started exploring these unusual plants!

1. Bryophyte Ecology e-book mentioned on the episode
2. Moss identification key
3. Liverwort identification key
4. Glossary of bryophyte-specific terminology

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

Did you know the continents move at the same rate as your fingernails grow? Welcome BACK to Tiny Living Beings after a couple years off! For the first episode of the new season, I have Dr. Bolton Howes on to give a geologist's perspective on the history of the Earth that I hope will give context for all the other episodes of this show. We discuss everything from the origin of the planet 4.5 billion years ago to the first life, when plants and animals evolved, the two times Earth turned into a literal snowball, giant bugs, dinosaurs, climate change, and why it's so hard to reconstruct the past.

Bolton is a sedimentary geologist finishing up his postdoctoral research fellowship at University of Washington and Western Washington University. He will be starting a professorship at Wheaton College in the summer. You can follow his work here or on his website.

Some resources Bolton mentions during the episode that may be of interest if you want to learn more about Earth's history are:

1. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
2. Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago by Douglas H. Erwin
3. Radiolab episode about dino extinction: Dinopocalypse Redux
4. I also enjoyed this book many years ago: Life on a Young Planet by Andrew H. Knoll

For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!

Music is "Introducing Cosmic Space" (2021 remix) by Elf Power and "Vorticella Dreams" by L. Felipe Benites.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any institution.

Choanoflagellates are unicellular protists but they also happen to be the closest living relatives to animals. This week, David Booth discusses what choanoflagellates are, where you can find them, and the connection to animal evolution. He also talks about how these microbes are interesting in their own right, impacting whole food webs and ecosytems and interacting with bacteria. We talk about the fossil record and cover a bunch of major evolutionary transitions and how microbial life was the precursor to the kingdoms of organisms we're most familiar with today.Dr. David Booth, PhD, is an assistant professor at University of California San Francisco. His lab investigates the ecological interactions and cell fate of choanoflagellates. You can follow him on Twitter (@dsboothacosta), Instagram (@bioboothlab) or find his work on his lab website or on Google Scholar.For more info on microbes and to follow updates of this podcast, find @couch_microscopy on Instagram, @CouchMicroscopy on Twitter, or visit www.couchmicroscopy.com/store for merch!Music is "Introducing Cosmic Space" by Elf Power and "Vorticella Dreams" by L. Felipe Benites.