Bdelloid rotifers are multiclellular microscopic critters with some very unique features. Most of them live in mosses or soil, an environment with little water, where they live in a thin film of water covering the moss leafs or small grains of sand or humus.
They are survival artists, they can survive years of desiccation and also are able survive lowest temperatures, for example in liquid nitrogen. Now scientisst have found them (alive!!!) in Siberian permafrost which has been shown to be frozen for 24000 years. Also exposition to ionizing radiation in space does not affect them. They have been found all around the globe, in hot deserts, in polar regions, but also in coffee machines or shower heads.
Another striking feature of belloid rotifers is that no males exist since millions of years; there are only females which reproduce by parthenogenesis, i.e. they produce daughters either by unfertilized eggs or by vivipary.
I would like to thank Nataliia Iakovenko and Aydin Orstan for their invaluable personal help and support for understanding the biology of bdelloid rotifers.
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