Honorable Mention: Green Sun

Photo by Hunter Hines, Ph.D., visiting researcher Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

This single-celled creature is a Heliozoan, known as a 'sun animal'. This one gets its green color from algae living symbiotically within. The spines of this tiny microbe give it a fierce appearance, despite it being a member of the bottom of the food chain. I collected this cell from a freshwater pond and imaged this cell with 400x phase-contrast microscopy at 400x magnification, as part of my research at HBOI looking at microbial ecology in Florida.