CSI's Open Plankton Labs

Contact Adrianna Hirtler (YWRyaWFubmEgfCBjb21tdW5pdHlzY2llbmNlICEgb3Jn) if interested!

Come explore the microscopic world of Cayuga Lake! Did you know that a diversity of tiny organisms that you can’t see with the naked eye produce roughly half of the world’s oxygen?

They live in oceans as well as freshwater bodies like Cayuga Lake. Others of these tiny creatures (many made up of just a single cell) move around more like animals and feed upon the products of this clandestine photosynthetic activity. All of these organisms collectively also feed other larger organisms that in turn feed the larger creatures of the world that we tend to notice more easily (i.e. fish, birds, etc.) . Some of these organisms even have both plant AND animal qualities. It’s as if the “rules of nature” that we’re used to break down at the microscopic level! Some of these tiny organisms also form potentially dangerous harmful algal blooms (HABs) when a lot of particular kinds concentrate together.

CSI's new Biomonitoring Lab space (Langmuir Lab Room 234) will be set up with compound microscopes and some helpful references for the exploration of plankton samples from Cayuga Lake (and maybe some stream samples too at some point?). Participants can drop in to explore the microscopic world of local water bodies for an hour each month during the summer of 2025.

-What do the organisms that make up a harmful algal bloom (HAB) look like up close?
-Who else inhabits the lake at a scale that we can't see with the naked eye but which are integral to so many different webs of life that we ourselves are intricately woven into?

We'll collectively try to figure out who's who and there will surely be mysteries that leave us all scratching our heads! For anyone who gets extra interested, there will be opportunities to sign out microscopes and plankton nets for the months between sessions to explore on your own. Folks who sign out microscopes are encouraged (but not required) to submit observations to CSI's iNaturalist project, "Cayuga Lake Phytoplankton." An overview of how this works will be shared at the open labs.