The first bacteria moved through the ooze; then came blue-green algae, spreading across the planet like a watery carpet, drinking in sunlight and exhaling oxygen, giving breath to everything that came after.
"After bleaching, algae spreads," Llewellyn said on WWF-Australia's website.
Five days after the L.A. pipeline rupture, officials in Toledo, Ohio, declared the tap water for half a million people unsafe to drink, tainted by toxic algae spreading in the warm waters of Lake Erie.
Mucky algae might spread, turning the sea red.
Nitrogen fertilisers get washed into streams, rivers, lakes and coastal areas where they feed algae that spread in thick carpets over the waters, suffocating life below.
Caulerpa taxifolia of the Chlorophyta, called the "Killer Algae," has spread from the Indian Ocean to areas off the coasts of Australia, into the Mediterranean, and along the coasts of the United States, affecting many native marine ecosystems.
The concentrated algae were spread and immobilized on a cellulose acetate membrane filter and subjected to particle bombardment.
Through subsequent plastid acquisitions, the plastids of both green and red algae were spread to other eukaryotes (e.g., chromalveolates, euglenoids, chlorarachniophytes).
