623983 external_news 1564780463 1564780463 Kristin Gribble is on a mission: to preach the gospel of rotifers. Chances are you’ve swum with one or swallowed one or stepped on one or all of the above. They’re tiny animals, some microscopic, some the size of a speck of dust. And they’re everywhere....No matter how fleeting a body of water is, rotifers can live in it. A moisture bauble caught ornament-like between strands of moss or lichen is enough. In case their pond or droplet dries up, they’ve evolved a neat stunt to withstand desiccation, forming hard little eggs that can last a decade, blowing about with wind gusts and traveling on birds’ feet. Terry Snell, an emeritus professor at Georgia Tech, has even seen some of them survive an hour of near-boiling....“The male is very different than in a human. The male rotifer does nothing but try to impregnate a female. He doesn’t have a mouth or a stomach. It reduces maleness to its essential parts,” joked Julia Kubanek, a chemistry professor who works with Snell at Georgia Tech.

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