Gulf Oil Spill: Recovery measurable by foraminifera

The University of California has issued a press release, that "
Tiny foraminifera shells can help assess recovery after oil spill. Millimeter-size marine organisms called foraminifera have been used to monitor pollutants in marshes and oceans, and could help to assess recovery in the Gulf of Mexico following the three-month long Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

That was the message from a French/American team of researchers who recently reported on the health of French marshes and mudflats 32 years after the Amoco Cadiz spilled 220,000 tons of oil along the Brittany coast in 1978."

"Our key to looking at these environments was the percentage of deformed foraminifera," said report co-author Jere Lipps, University of California, Berkeley, professor of integrative biology and an expert on foraminifera. "The percentage went way up during the oil spill, and then after about two years came back down to 2 or 3 percent, and that is where we see it today."

Read the whole story at UC Berkeley News


Deformed Elphidium from Kiel Fjord, Germany:

Foto courtesy of Irina from Irina Polovodova et. al., 2008: Foraminiferal test abnormalities in the western Baltic Sea in Journal of Foraminiferal Research, v. 38 (4), p. 318-336.
click here to see more images and read more

As pointed out in an earlier post, a great number of foraminifera are affected by the Gulf oil disaster. The comparison of the affected faunas now with those of the past and those in the future may provide a deep understanding of the impact and recovery processes.

Find more information on men-made pollution measured by foraminifera in the Mini-lecture: Foraminifera record pollution


Michael of foraminifera.eu

Evolution illustrated by foraminifera 1

Natural Selection

The theory of evolution wants to explain how we - meaning all living organisms - came to be in all our complexity and variation. In a group of organisms the environmental conditions will favour some individuals while others will not reproduce as well. If heritable characters are the cause a shift in the frequency of these heritable characters within a population will occur after some generations. This process is called natural selection.

fossil Globigerina sp.
Italy, Pleistocene
Natural selection leads to specific foraminiferal faunas in specific environments

Open Sea offers little nutrition, which makes survival very difficult though competition is low and predators are rare. Many planktonic foraminifers use symbiont algae, who deliver energy through photosynthesis. In return they gives shelter for the little algae in its chambers, which need to be transparent, so that the sunlight may pass. Its globose construction allows up and downward drift in the watercolumn, probably needed to follow food, avoid predators and UV radiation.

recent Globigerinoides ruber from Mexican pacific ocean.

read the whole story at www.foraminifera.eu/evolution.html

Incoming samples week 9-10

A core sample from Cape Hatteras with 72 single plastic bags representing 190m in depth came in. A chart on the abundance of foraminifera at all depth-levels will help to start with the most promising parts. The core ranges from recent to probably Miocene. This valuable sample definitely needs a close investigation and processing.

Reussella

Reussella - a small perforate taxa is very common in the material from Kemp Beach, Queensland. The genus with a pyramidal test is reported in the fossil record since Middle Eocene (~ 40 Mio. years). The image shows one side and the basis of the pyramid - maybe a bit confusing.

The sample send from Australia by Kirsten is very rich in diversity and total amount of foraminifera. Further images will be added.




Earlier I found a fossilized Reussella in material from Torrente Stirone , Italy in material provided by Michael - one of the first contributors. The image better illustrates the pyramidal form. It's about 1 Mio. years old from Pleistocene.

Please send me your Oligocene or Eocene Reussellas :)

Cribrostomoides crassimargo

from the bottom of the Russian Barents Sea comes this agglutinating Foraminfera:

Cribrostomoides crassimargo
(Norman, 1892)

Common in the Arctic. The test is build using small grains cemented together.

The specimen is provided by Katya from Moscow.
Thanks a lot Katya ! I will need some time to work on the other specimens.

Lagenammina atlantica from the Faroe-Shetland Channel

Onno Groß president of DEEPWAVE a NGO for the protection of the oceans has provided numerous SEM-images of benthic foraminifera found at the shelf+continental slope of the Faroe-Shetland channel. The depth ranges from 155m to 1200m.
(see station-list to the right).







A prominent bathyal species for the North Atlantic is Lagenammina atlantica. This specimen has used volcanic glas to build its test.

Find the whole collection at www.foraminifera.eu/faroe.html

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Incoming Samples 2010 Weeks 4+5

An envelope from Michael (Louisville, Kentucky / USA) arrived with about 40 single forams from the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian: huge Fusulinids (see drawing of parafusulinid), Orbitulinas and Endothyras. See the interesting blog Louisville Fossils. Now I have first Paleozoic forams - what an excitement. Thanks a lot Michael. I will send a package with European forams back for Herb.

Kirstens material from Australia has arrived, several samples from the beaches of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia - 200-300g in total. In half of a spoon from Woolgoolga - Solitary Islands Marine Park, NSW I found about 100 forams ranging from Textularia, Miliolids, Elphidiums, Planorbulina, Cibicides to Globigerina, Globorotalia - o my God - there are about 200 spoons left, to be analyzed :) Thank you so much Kirsten.

Incoming Samples 2010 Weeks 1+2+3

Adrian sent several 10-20g samples among which are Fleury-la-Rivière, Lutetian, near Paris France. It is his 11th mailing. I plan to send some micro-shells back.

Akira kindly promised to sent some samples from Japan => the first from that part of the World !

Kirsten from Australia offered a package of different sand-samples. She will choose the best ones.

Peneroplis planatus from Yemen - an optical image

Last year I received in a plain envelope some plummercells filled with hundreds of foraminifera from young scientist Wafaa in Sanaa, Yemen. I started with SEM images (59 so far), see www.foraminifera.eu/wafaa.html.

I think optical images are a nice addition to illustrate this diverse fauna near Socotra, Yemen in the Indian Ocean and Peneroplis planatus a nice start.

The image is taken with a simple ocular camera. Sharpness is achieved by stacking different single images

Peneroplis is very common in the East Meditteranean, Red and Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean .... You may easily get it from sand-samples.

I hope you like the image :)

Michael

More Content in 2010 on foraminifera

In 2010 I want to add more content to www.foraminifera.eu by

- featured genus pages (such as Amphistegina), Ammonia will follow

- mini lectures (a lecture on forams as indicators of pollution is under construction

- I will ask people to provide content