{"id":73835,"date":"2025-11-17T13:11:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T07:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=73835"},"modified":"2025-11-17T13:41:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T08:11:47","slug":"foraminifera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/foraminifera\/","title":{"rendered":"Foraminifera"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Foraminifera Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A global review of tiny sea animals called foraminifera has identified 57 new living species.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Foraminifera<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Foraminifera, or <\/span><b>forams <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for short, are <\/span><b>single-celled organisms<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that live in the <\/span><b>open ocean, along the coasts, and in estuaries.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most have <\/span><b>shells for protection<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>either float in the water column (planktonic)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or <\/span><b>live on the sea floor (benthic).\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of the approximately 8,000 species living today, only about 40 species are planktonic, thus the vast <\/span><b>majority of foraminifera live on the sea floor.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They live in a number of <\/span><b>different habitats at the sea bottom<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>most \u2018crawl around\u2019 using their pseudopodia.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are generally <\/span><b>less than 500 microns (\u00bd mm) in size,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> though some tropical species can grow to 20 cm.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because they <\/span><b>don\u2019t have a wall around their cell membranes<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, they are <\/span><b>extremely flexible and can change shape.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>What does \u201cforaminifera\u201d mean?<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><b> shells have hundreds of tiny holes called foramen<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Latin word for window.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The organism <\/span><b>pushes extensions of its cytoplasm called pseudopodia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (or false feet) <\/span><b>through these holes to gather food.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>What Do They Eat?<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Foraminifera eat <\/span><b>detritus on the sea floor<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>anything smaller than them: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">diatoms, bacteria, algae, and even small animals such as tiny copepods.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>How Do They Build Their Shells?<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Forams are unusual among single-celled organisms because they <\/span><b>build shells made of calcium carbonate <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(calcareous) or from tiny grains of sand stuck together (agglutinate).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite their small size and relatively simple biology, forams <\/span><b>build complex shells,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> consisting at their simplest of one chamber (like a vase or tube) to many chambers that coil in elaborate ways.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-11-global-species-tiny-marine-foraminifera.html#google_vignette\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">PHYS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foraminifera are single-celled organisms that live in the open ocean, along the coasts, and in estuaries. Read more about Foraminifera Species, Means, Diet, Habitat, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":73840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3747,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-73835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-foraminifera","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}