ROFIERS ROCK. BUT I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE ONE

Rotifers get their name from the crown of finger-like projections called “cilia” that rotate at the top of their “heads”.  This allows them to swim.  These microscopic animals can be found world-wide in water.  Don’t worry, they don’t make you sick.  In fact, many of them are helpful.  They are a vital part of the aquatic food web.  They eat algae, bacteria, protists, and each other!  In turn, they get eaten by larval fish and aquatic insects.  Rotifers can reproduce quickly, within as little as a few days of their own hatching.  They have two modes of reproduction.  One route is sexual reproduction between a male and female.  This doesn’t happen often.  Most scientists think this only occurs when times are tough (not enough food, water drying up, too hot, to cold…) and sex is a last-ditch effort to reproduce before they die.  Get this, when living conditions are cruddy, the female will make a special egg that will hatch and become a male.  This male will go around and fertilize as many females as possible.  The males are basically swimming bags of sperm.  After sexual reproduction, the female rotifer will lay 1-2 eggs that can withstand drying.  This allows rotifers to survive even in crappy conditions.  When things improve these hardy eggs will hatch and form the next rotifer generation. 

Most of the time the ladies are on their own.  Under suitable conditions the females will clone themselves (parthenogenesis) and produce 1-2 eggs that will hatch to become more females.

Well, if that isn’t just a doozy!  When females “lay” eggs, they glue them to long sticky-out (scientific term) toes.  These eggs can be half the size of the female.  Imagine a 140-pound female with two 70-pound eggs glued to her toes trying to swim with cilia on her head.  You go girl!  I don’t want to be you.