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June 2009
Shalom!
We are a group of students from Israel who study marine biology in Ruppin academic center in the city of Michmoret. As part of our oceanographic cruise in which we examine the properties of the water column we are trying to identify a phytoplankton species that did not appear on our records of the levantine basin (mediterranean sea) in the last few years of exploring. We suspect it to be a species within the genus Phaeocystis but briefly reading in the releavant literature shows it is not exactly what we suspect and perhaps a different species, looks like it belongs to the phylum Radiolaria. Our sample is not a single cell but more like a colony, perhaps a multiple celled gelatinous aggregation. As part of our search after an answer we came across your website: www.radiolaria.org and were pondering maybe it would be possible to get some help with our problem.

We attached a few photos we took, some of the photos were taken by a light microscope attached camera and another one (photo E) was taken by Epifluorescense microscope so the Chlorophyll would be more visible to the naked eye.

Much appericiation for your time and help,

Shani and Elad,
Marine Sciences & Ocean Environment
Ruppin Academic Center
Michmoret, Israel

Elad Mills 2009/07/15

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Additional photos


A-C: Single radiolarian cell (light microscope images)
D- Colony (light microscope image)
E- Colony (Epifluorescense microscope image)

Elad Mills (2009/07/15)

Dear Shani and Elad,
these Mystery-rads are in my opinion very similar to Sphaerozoum geminatum. See Haeckel 1887 (pl. 4, fig. 4) http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/haeckel/challenger/Spumellaria/100dpi/p004.jpg

The smaller yellow-brown "dots" seen in image A-C are probably symbionts with chlorophyll (seen in image E).

Best wishes,
-jane

Jane K. Dolven (2009/07/15)

Hawaiian colonial rad

colonial radiolarian

I found something like this in the North Pacific, very similar symbiont (zooxanthellae) number and distribution and very similar spicules. Nice find!

Dean Jacobson (2013/08/02)

This is Sphaerozoum fuscum species.

Sonia Munir (2017/07/07)

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