Picozoa

Picozoa

Picozoa are very tiny creatures that live in the ocean. They are a kind of simple, single-celled organism called a protist. These little beings are about 3 micrometers long, which is 30 times smaller than a hair!

At first, scientists thought picozoa were like algae because they were found with tiny plants in the water. But later, they learned that picozoa do not make their own food. Instead, they eat other very small organisms to get their food.

Right now, scientists know of only one species of picozoa, called Picomonas judraskeda. They think picozoa are closely related to a group of ocean plants called Rhodophyta, or red algae.

Picozoa were first discovered in the late 1990s during a project called “Picodiv.” Scientists took water samples from the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and places near Scotland, Alaska, and Norway. They found these tiny organisms in cold, nutrient-poor coastal waters, where they can make up half of the living material in the water!