Part of the community of minuscule marine creatures known as dinoflagellates reproduce by dividing into two identical halves. The Phytoplankton Laboratory group at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) captured an image of the end of this process in the species Ornithocercus quadratus, which lives in the waters near the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. In the first recording of this phenomenon in Brazilian waters, the two individuals in formation remain connected by a ribbed bridge, the dorsal megacytic bridge, until all of the structures are complete. The junction then dissolves. The image was obtained from samples fixed in formalin and analyzed under 200x magnification.
Image sent by biologist Eveline Pinheiro de Aquino, a PhD student in the UFPE Department of Oceanography
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