Natural Beauty
BY JAMES J. LIDINGTON

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes it takes more than the naked eye to see the artistry of nature's handiwork. By placing planktonic organisms and foraminifera (tiny, primitive marine animals) under the microscope and using a set of "filters" that employ light, rather than biological stains, to distinguish their components, Old Dominion's Lisa Drake has produced a series of stunning photomicrographs.

Science and art come together beautifully in the brightly colored images, which were displayed on campus recently.

Drake, an Old Dominion alumna and research scientist in the university's Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, took the pictures by attaching camera to microscope.

"The oceans and coastal waters of the world are teeming with plankton, which is a Greek word for 'wandering.' It refers to animals (zooplankton) and plants (phytoplankton) that generally cannot control their movements against the physical forces of tides and currents," explained Drake.

"The surprising - and artful - aspect of plankton, particularly the phytoplankton, is that it is composed of interesting forms, ranging from simple rod-like species to ornate, curling chains of star-shaped cells. One group of phytoplankton, the diatoms, has 'glass'-like walls with intricate designs that render them especially lovely."

"Crown of Stars in Blue" (right), a photomicrograph of the diatom Asterionella sp. ("small, graceful star"), is from a sample collected in a net from the Lafayette River near campus.

"Spinning Tops and Flowers" (left) features a pattern of microscopic foraminifera. The original magnifications for the "spinning tops" and "flowers" were 32x and 50x, respectively. Both of the specimens measure approximately 1 millimeter in diameter. The forams were collected at Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas. Daniel Dauer, eminent scholar of biological sciences, designed the checkerboard pattern.