Daphnia SciArt - Part 1

I’m a huge fan of #SciArt as a way for scientists to express their creativity and engage in science communication with a general audience.

During my PhD studying Daphnia freshwater zooplankton hosts infected by a fungal pathogen, we would often talk about the idea of glassworm midge (Chaoborus) larvae as “predator spreaders” in our host-parasite system. Chaoborus are really messy eaters, so as they kill and consume their Daphnia prey, they spread fungal spores in the water column, increasing disease transmission.

This predator-spreader process is the opposite of how predation is usually considered to impact disease. According to the “healthy herds” hypothesis, predators often preferentially kill and consume sick hosts and therefore decrease disease transmission. The classic example given for healthy-herds is usually wolves and deer in North America, or sometimes lions and zebras on the African savannah. (My advisor Spencer Hall liked to point out that this healthy-herds idea has even made it to the mainstream to as a factoid on endangered species chocolate bars.)

So when I found out that an artist friend of mine (the amazing Eric Dagley, now working professionally in the video game industry) was looking for commission work, I quickly decided that the predator-spreader concept - while completely unrelated to my personal research - was probably the most visually compelling thing that our lab worked on.

Thus, the masterpiece below was born.

I love how it’s delightfully stylized, but not too cartoon-y. He did a great job threading that needle, and capturing the cloud of spores escaping from the infected Daphnia.

I’m not a trained artist, but I do have one Daphnia-related piece of SciArt that I made myself: this ink drawing of a Daphnia I made to put on my grad school business cards.

If you have any other Daphnia SciArt that you love, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter: @MartaShocket or via email.

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