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Lake Menomin in Menomonie Wisconsin was overwhelmed with a blue-green algae bloom that caused the water to become toxic.
The green you see is algae. Turtle Pond, so designated in 1987 in honor of its most prominent residents, began life as Belvedere Lake, which was, in turn, originally part of the Croton Reservoir that once covered what is now the Great Lawn. At its inception Belvedere Lake was a shallow pool of nondescript shape that soon became the home to an itinerant collection of fish, frogs, turtles, dragonflies, and aquatic fowl. While not part of the original park plan it quickly became clear that the pond was in an ideal location at the base of Vista Rock, perfectly complimenting the view of Belvedere Castle.
In 1997 the Great Lawn was renovated, giving Turtle Pond an entirely new look (think of it as amphibian urban development). The shoreline was redesigned to create an environment more consistent with the needs of the many animals, aquatic, amphibian, reptilian and aviary that called it home. A great variety of plants were set in place in and around the shoreline to add to the effect. While they provide a very natural look to the pond thay are in fact planted on man made concrete shelves around the edge.
As part of the renovation, a new island — Turtle Island, surprisingly enough — was added to the pond. This refuge provides another spot for migrating birds to visit as well as the regular denzens to build their nests. There are sandy spots for the turtles to lay their eggs and whie the Island gives the inhabitants a certain amount of privacy there are great spots either along the shoreline, or from the Castle above, to view all the animals during the different seasons.
Designated as a quiet zone (loud music and noisy activities are prohibited), this pastoral lawn is a great place to read, ruminate or simply enjoy the surrounding beauty.
Water Sample from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico Hot Spring Drain.
Photos were taken using the Proscope HR and miXscope.
bought me some "golden algae eaters" this past weekend, it should take care of the algae problem (I hope)
they're already doing a great job on it, the tank looks cleaner (and less green) already
picture is slightly out of focus though.... these little buggers are too skittish to be properly photographed!
Marine algae is an important local commodity, produced with repurposed plastic bottles as line floats
Wet & Forget is a non-caustic, non-acidic, gentle product that removes moss, mold, mildew, and algae from any outdoor surface!
Esmalte bem lindinho e muito fácil de pintar e limpar. Poderia ter usado 1 camda, mas o hábito fez eu usar 2. Pena que estraguei o dedo médio, na foto parece que tá horrível, mas na verdade foi bem pouquinho!
Holotype: a sculpture installation by Amy Caron
World Premiere: 2012
Dimensions available: variable
Dimensions shown: 4,000 sq/ft foot print x 20 ft. tall (multiple structures)
View shown: structure #4 interior/side from main floor
Available for touring in 2013 more info: www.amycaron.com
Photograph by Danielle Endow
The algae somehow attaches itself to random rocks and thus stacks at the bottom of the ocean (more or less).
This brown alga does not constitutively release ROS. It hardly glows at all. Back to UAB in Antarctica website.
Sloths are medium-sized mammals belonging to the families Megalonychidae (two-toed sloth) and Bradypodidae (three-toed sloth), classified into six species.
They are part of the order Pilosa and are therefore related to anteaters, which sport a similar set of specialized claws. Extant sloths are arboreal (tree-dwelling) residents of the jungles of Central and South America, and are known for being slow-moving, and hence named "sloths". Extinct sloth species include a few species of aquatic sloths and many ground sloths, some of which attained the size of elephants.
Sloths make a good habitat for other organisms, and a single sloth may be home to moths, beetles, cockroaches, ciliates, fungi, and algae.
TAXONOMY AND NAMES
The sloth's taxonomic suborder is Folivora, sometimes also called Phyllophaga (Owen, 1842) or Tardigrada (Latham and Davies, 1795). The first two names both mean "leaf-eaters"; derived from Latin and Greek, respectively. Names for the animals used by tribes in Ecuador include ritto, rit, and ridette, mostly forms of the word "sleep", "eat", and "dirty" from Tagaeri tribe of Huaorani.
ECOLOGY
Sloths are classified as folivores, as the bulk of their diets consist of buds, tender shoots, and leaves, mainly of Cecropia trees. Some two-toed sloths have been documented as eating insects, small reptiles, and birds as a small supplement to their diets. Linnaeus's two-toed sloth has recently been documented eating human faeces from open latrines. They have made extraordinary adaptations to an arboreal browsing lifestyle. Leaves, their main food source, provide very little energy or nutrients, and do not digest easily. Sloths, therefore, have large, specialized, slow-acting stomachs with multiple compartments in which symbiotic bacteria break down the tough leaves. Sloths' tongues have the unique ability to protrude from their mouths 10 to 12 inches, an ability that is useful for collecting leaves just out of reach. As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete.
Since leaves provide little energy, sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures: they have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a mammal of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30–34°C), and still lower temperatures when resting.
Although unable to survive outside the tropical rainforests of South and Central America, within that environment sloths are outstandingly successful creatures. On Barro Colorado Island in Panama, sloths have been estimated to comprise 70% of the biomass of arboreal mammals. Four of the six living species are presently rated "least concern"; the maned three-toed sloth (Bradypus torquatus), which inhabits Brazil's dwindling Atlantic Forest, is classified as "endangered", while the island-dwelling pygmy three-toed sloth (B. pygmaeus) is critically endangered.
PHYSIOLOGY
Sloth fur exhibits specialized functions: the outer hairs grow in a direction opposite from that of other mammals. In most mammals, hairs grow toward the extremities, but because sloths spend so much time with their legs above their bodies, their hairs grow away from the extremities to provide protection from the elements while the sloth hangs upside down. In most conditions, the fur hosts two species of symbiotic algae, which provide camouflage. Because of the algae, sloth fur is a small ecosystem of its own, hosting many species of non-parasitic insects. Sloths have short, flat heads, big eyes; short snouts, long legs, and tiny ears. Some species have stubby tails (6–7 cm long). Altogether, sloths' bodies usually are between 50 and 60 cm long.
Sloths' claws serve as their only natural defense. A cornered sloth may swipe at its attackers in an effort to scare them away or wound them. Despite sloths' apparent defenselessness, predators do not pose special problems: sloths blend in with the trees and, moving only slowly, do not attract attention. Only during their infrequent visits to ground level do they become vulnerable. The main predators of sloths are the jaguar, the harpy eagle, and humans. The majority of recorded sloth deaths in Costa Rica are due to contact with electrical lines and poachers. Their claws also provide a further unexpected deterrent to human hunters; when hanging upside-down in a tree, they are held in place by the claws themselves and often do not fall down even if shot from below.
Despite their adaptation to living in trees, sloths (like many other rainforest animals) make competent swimmers. This is likely to have been true of the extinct ground sloths, as well, as evidenced by the fact that megalonychid sloths were able to colonise the Antilles by the Oligocene, and that the megalonychid Pliometanastes and the mylodontid Thinobadistes were able to colonise North America about 9 million years ago, well before the existence of the Isthmus of Panama. Additionally, the nothrotheriid Thalassocnus of the west coast of South America became adapted to a semiaquatic marine lifestyle.
Sloths move only when necessary and even then very slowly; they have about a quarter as much muscle tissue as other animals of similar weight. They can move at a marginally higher speed if they are in immediate danger from a predator (4 m per minute for the three-toed sloth), but they burn large amounts of energy doing so. Their specialised hands and feet have long, curved claws to allow them to hang upside down from branches without effort. While they sometimes sit on top of branches, they usually eat, sleep, and even give birth hanging from limbs. They sometimes remain hanging from branches after death. On the ground, the maximum speed of the three-toed sloth is 2 m or 6.5 ft per minute.
Sloths were thought to be among the most somnolent animals, sleeping from 15 to 18 hours each day. Recently, however, Dr. Neil Rattenborg and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, published a study testing sloth sleep patterns in the wild; this is the first study of its kind. The study indicated that sloths sleep just under 10 hours a day. Three-toed sloths are mostly diurnal, while two-toed sloths are nocturnal
Sloths go to the ground to urinate and defecate about once a week, digging a hole and covering it afterwards. They go to the same spot each time and are vulnerable to predation while doing so. The reason for this risky behaviour is unknown, although some believe it is to avoid making noise while defecating from up high that would attract predators. Consistent with this, they reportedly relieve themselves from their branches during storms in the rainy season. Another possible explanation is that the middens provide the sloths with one of their few methods of finding one another for breeding purposes, since their sense of smell is far more acute than their eyesight or hearing. Still other recent studies have suggested that it might be relevant for maintaining the ecosystem in the sloths' fur. Individual sloths tend to spend the bulk of their time feeding on a single "modal" tree; by burying their excreta near the trunk of that tree, they may help nourish it. Recently there has been some speculation that sloths go to the ground to defecate because of their mutually beneficial relationships with moths. While the sloth defecates, female moths that otherwise live on a sloth will get off and immediately lay their eggs directly on the fecal matter, on which the larvae survive until they mature to adulthood and are able to fly onto sloths. Incidentally, it appears that sloths benefit from their relationship with moths because the moths are responsible for fertilizing algae on the sloth, which provides them with nutrients.
Infant sloths normally cling to their mothers' fur, but occasionally fall off.[citation needed] Sloths are very sturdily built and rarely die from a fall. In some cases, they die from a fall indirectly because the mothers prove unwilling to leave the safety of the trees to retrieve the young. Females normally bear one baby every year, but sometimes sloths' low level of movement actually keeps females from finding males for longer than one year. Sloths are not particularly sexually dimorphic and several zoos have purchased sloths of the wrong sex.
Almost all mammals have seven cervical vertebrae (neck bones), including those with very short necks, such as elephants or whales, and those with very long necks, such as giraffes). The few exceptions include manatees and two-toed sloths, which each have only six cervical vertebrae, and three-toed sloths with 9 cervical vertebrae.
EVOLUTION
Sloths are members of the superorder Xenarthra, a group of mammals that appeared in South America about 60 million years ago (Mya), although at least one source puts the date at which sloths and related animals broke off from other placental mammals at about 100 Mya. Also included among the Xenarthra are anteaters and armadillos. The earliest xenarthrans were arboreal herbivores with sturdy spines, fused pelvises, stubby teeth, and small brains.
The living sloths belong to one of two families, known as the Megalonychidae ("two-toed" sloths) and the Bradypodidae (three-toed sloths). All living sloths have in fact three toes; the "two-toed" sloths, however, have only two fingers. Two-toed sloths are generally faster-moving than three-toed sloths. Both types tend to occupy the same forests; in most areas, one species of three-toed sloth and one species of the larger two-toed type will jointly predominate.
However, their adaptations belie the actual relationships of the living sloth genera, which are more distant from each other than their outward similarity suggests. The common ancestor of the two genera apparently lived 35–40 Mya, making the living forms stunning examples of convergent or parallel evolution. The two-toed sloths of today are far more closely related to one particular group of ground sloths than to the living three-toed sloths. Whether these ground-dwelling Megalonychidae were descended from tree-climbing ancestors or whether the two-toed sloths are really miniature ground sloths converted (or reverted) to arboreal life cannot presently be determined to satisfaction. The latter possibility seems slightly more likely, because the small ground sloths Acratocnus and Neocnus, which were also able to climb, are among the closer relatives of the two-toed sloths, and these together were related to the huge ground sloths Megalonyx and Megalocnus.
The evolutionary history of the three-toed sloths is not well known. No particularly close relatives, ground-dwelling or not, have yet been identified.
The ground sloths do not constitute a monophyletic group. Rather, they make up a number of lineages, and as far as is known, until the Holocene, most sloths were in fact ground-dwellers. The famous Megatherium, for example, belonged to a lineage of ground sloths that was not very close to the living sloths and their ground-living relatives, like the small Neocnus or the massive Megalonyx. Meanwhile, Mylodon, among the last ground sloths to disappear, was only very distantly related to either of these.
Classification
Suborder Folivora (sloths)
Family Bradypodidae (three-toed sloths)
Bradypus
Pale-throated sloth (Bradypus tridactylus))
Brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
Maned sloth (Bradypus torquatus)
Pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus)
Family Megalonychidae (two-toed sloths and extinct ground sloths)
Choloepus (two-toed sloths)
Hoffmann's two-toed sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)
Linnaeus's two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus)
Acratocnus
Habanocnus
Imagocnus
Megalocnus
Megalonyx
Neocnus
Family Megatheriidae (extinct ground sloths)
Eremotherium
Hapalops
Megatherium
Prepotherium
Promegatherium
Family Mylodontidae (extinct ground sloths)
Glossotherium
Lestodon
Mylodon
Paramylodon
Scelidotherium
Chubutherium
Family Nothrotheriidae (extinct ground sloths)
Mionothropus
Nothropus
Nothrotheriops
Nothrotherium
Pronothrotherium
Thalassocnus
EXTINCTIONS
Until about 10,000 years ago, ground sloths such as Megatherium lived in South America as well as in much of North America; they colonized the latter as part of the Great American Interchange. Along with many other animals, however, they disappeared shortly after the appearance of humans on both continents. Much evidence suggests human hunting contributed to the extinction of the American megafauna, like that of far northern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar. Simultaneous climate change that came with the end of the last ice age may have also played a role in some cases. However, the survival of ground sloths on the Antilles until about 5000 years ago (after these islands were finally settled by humans), long after they had died out on the mainland, points toward human activities as the agency of extinction.
In Peru and Chile, sloths of the genus Thalassocnus adapted to a coastal marine lifestyle beginning in the late Miocene. Initially they just stood in the water, but over a span of 4 million years they eventually evolved into swimming creatures. It is thought that when the Isthmus of Panama closed about 3 million years ago the water grew colder, perhaps contributing to their extinction by the late Pliocene. The plants these sloths fed on may have grown sparse, or they may have been unable to adapt to the lower water temperatures.
CONSERVATION
In Costa Rica, the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary cares for "wounded and abandoned sloths. About 130 animals have been released back into the wild."
IN POPULAR CULTURE
Sloths increased on popularity the early 21st century, with the release of the first of the Ice Age movies, which featured Sid, a prehistoric ground sloth, as a central character. As of 2013, there are four Ice Age movies, with the fifth planned to come out on the 15th of July, 2016. The Croods, which came out in 2013, features a sloth as a family pet.
WIKIPEDIA
This is an image of two species of the filamentous algae Microspora (bottom two) and the diatom Fragilaria under a microscope using UV light and 1000x magnification. The red colour is the auto-fluorescence of the chlorophyll and the blue glow is from a fluorescent stain that binds to the cell walls of the algae.