Labyrinthula - An underwater microbial railway network

Labyrinthula species are protistan organisms found predominantly in coastal marine environments, notably as residents on seagrass leaves. A fascinating characteristic of this order, observed over a century ago but little studied since, is the ability for cells to secrete an extracellular ectoplasmic net. This allows colonies to form a spatial network of interconnected extracellular filaments across a substrate. Individual Labyrinthula cells are confined within these filaments and move independently about this network. The collective and interconnected behaviour amongst moving cells and the expanding network invites a physics-based description to this biological system. In this developing project, we describe and contextualise the behaviour of growing colonies as spatial networks and probe their environmental dependence.