Nicole Pittoors

Deep-sea ‘hotels’ reveal 20 new species hiding in Pacific Ocean twilight zone near Guam A transparent goby fish drifted through the darkness, its skeleton visible through paper-thin skin. Nearby, a sea slug wore yellow polka dots like a party dress, while an orange fish with bulging…

Scientists retrieved 13 ARMS units from deep reefs off Guam, collecting 2,000 specimens, including 100 species new to the region and 20+ new to science.

Sensors show warming even in the twilight zone. It’s the start of a 76-ARMS effort to protect deep Pacific reefs.

Day 27 - Bounded #sciartseptember. In the deep sea a pair of shrimp will begin living in glass sponges and remain trapped inside the sponge once they get larger, the shrimp will be bound to the sponge for the rest of their lives.

Got a little busy today with work, so a little bit of a cheat, but for #sciartseptember prompt niche we have the various animals that call the hydrothermal vents there home, each filling a paticular niche.

The Deep Ones - I’ve been always thinking about a deep sea Cephalopod theme and here it is! Tentacles and appendages are so different when it comes to arranging the composition so it took me a good while, and hopefully it ends up well! 🦑🐙They’re just like from another world💙

A Starfish Has Captivated Argentina. It Didn’t Ask to Be Political. A livestream of an undersea project has captivated Argentina as President Javier Milei wields a chain saw on the budget for science.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Argentina have watched a livestream of a deep sea exploration, partly out of interest in nature and partly as a form of activism as President Javier Milei threatens to cut state-funded science. nyti.ms/45rOOmu

#WHOI's Johanna Weston is part of a @schmidtocean.bsky.social research mission to investigate the biodiversity of a deep-sea canyon off of Argentina with her zooplankton sampler #DeepZoo!

📲Join millions of Argentinians following SOI’s next Divestream: youtube.com/@SchmidtOcean/streams

This would be a great entry for a coffee table book of on-the-fly field sampling innovations.

Volcanic Eruption in Deep Ocean Ridge Is Witnessed by Scientists for First Time (Gift Article) Researchers diving in a submersible in the eastern Pacific realized that the landscape they had studied the day before had been glassed over by fresh lava.

**BIG NEWS in the geology world!** For the first time, scientists spotted an active eruption along the mid-ocean ridge!!

They visited the hydrothermal vent the day before, where a vibrant ecosystem thrived in the sweltering water. The next day, everything was gone. ⚒️🧪

My latest for @nytimes.com

Very excited this part of my PhD is out 🎉 We describe vent viral and microbial traits that govern viral biogeography and contribute to mounting evidence that these communities are highly endemic, and thus likely vulnerable to disruptive activities like deep sea mining
#Microbiome #DeepSeaMining

Attention Ocean Artists! 4Ocean is hiring an Art Director! Remote position.

sevenseasmedia.org/job/art-dire...

Harvard University Harvard University is devoted to excellence in teaching, learning, and research, and to developing leaders who make a difference globally.

Harvard redid its whole homepage to push back against the administration’s demands. I mean, this is just a website but I think it’s kind of a great PR move: www.harvard.edu

Hey, that’s my undergraduate advisor! Jill inspired me to take this path in biological oceanography and her phenomenal mentorship is how I got to where I am today.

PA scientists supported by NIH and NSF will remember this and are ready to vote you out. Close the government or gut the "world class medical research" in PA (stated by you on 2/13/25). NIH-funded research recently saved your life?? Hello??

Contrasting genomic responses of hydrothermal vent animals and their symbionts to population decline after the Hunga volcanic eruption Genetic bottlenecks are evolutionary events that reduce the effective size and diversity of natural populations, often limiting a population's ability to adapt to environmental change. Given the accel...

The second was led by Dr. Corinna Breusing with coauthors Michelle Hauer, @chemosymbiosis.bsky.social Johann Becker, Brennan Phillips, and @pgirguis.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phage interactions may contribute to the population structure and dynamics of hydrothermal vent microbial symbionts Deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems are sustained by chemoautotrophic bacteria that symbiotically provide organic matter to their animal hosts through the oxidation of chemical reductants in vent fl...

Amidst all the bad news, I still want to share two new preprints from our lab group. The first is led by newly minted Dr. Michelle Hauer, in collaboration with @karthik-a.bsky.social @katiekliermicrobe.bsky.social and @maggielangwig.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Interested ocean artist here! Here is my portfolio: www.nicolepittoors.com/projects-7

These are amazing! Nematodes should be honored to have such a stunning portrait of themselves.

Finally got around to finishing an illustration that has been on my mind for a while - anatomy of an Octocoral polyp (modeled after Swiftia exserta).

Discovery of deep-sea coral symbionts from a novel clade of marine bacteria with severely reduced genomes - Nature Communications Corals and other marine invertebrates host diverse microbes that remain poorly characterized, especially in the deep sea. Here the authors discover a new clade of bacteria with uniquely streamlined ge...

Exciting new work from Dr. Samuel Vohsen of the Herrera Deep-Sea Ecology and Evolution Lab: Discovery of deep-sea coral symbionts from a novel clade of marine bacteria with severely reduced genomes www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is a deep-sea science starter pack for everyone. Please feel free to suggest deep-sea people I've missed. go.bsky.app/7o7ynVk

Macrofaunal Biodiversity and Patch Mosaics on the Deep Gulf of Mexico Seafloor The deep-sea benthos often exhibit exceptional biodiversity. The patch-mosaic hypothesis proposes that this deep-sea diversity arises from varied microhabitats with prolonged temporal persistence fil...

Newest paper from the lab: Macrofaunal Biodiversity and Patch Mosaics on the Deep Gulf of Mexico Seafloor onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #MarineLife #DeepSea #Science

might I add that Phronima sp., Lophelia pertusa, and Vulcanoctopus sp. stickers are for sale in my etsy shop :) www.etsy.com/shop/beyondt...

I figured it would be fitting for my first post on this platform to be for #invertefest, featuring some of the commissioned work I have done for scientific conferences. Looking forward to drawing many more inverts this year!

Ascending after a very successful mesophotic dive at Desecheo Ridge! Puerto Rico has welcomed us with abundant and diverse corals and cryptofauna. Excited to see what other communities we will encounter during this expedition with @SchmidtOcean! #DiagnosingDeepCoral

Expedition #DiagnosingDeepCoral is off to a beautiful start! @SchmidtOcean @lehighu

That’s a wrap on the 2023 Lava Watch expedition to the East Pacific Rise! After my first Alvin dive and many fluid and biological samples, we meet our final challenge: returning to single digit temps in the Lehigh Valley.

After a few completed Alvin dives, the @LehighU geochemistry team is getting into the rhythm of the night with many (!) successful vent fluid and biological samples. #LavaWatch23 #NSFfunded

Thrilled to be heading back to EPR 9 50N with @jillmmcd’s geochemistry team, and even more thrilled to be accompanied by HOV Alvin.

this space fueled my persistence to not give up on my career dreams. So I guess this is my twitter eulogy.. #RIPTwitter (3/3)