This page links to photos of a few species of shallow water foraminifera commonly seen in the Marshall Islands. Forams are technically not animals. They belong to the kingdom Protista (often called Protozoa), a group of single celled organisms that also include zooxanthellae, the single celled photosynthetic dinoflagellates that are symbiotic with corals and some mollusks. Formas are, as stated in Wikipedia, "members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly an external shell (called a "test") of diverse forms and materials." There are many species known from the Marshalls. Chave & Devaney (1987) list 280 species of foraminifera and nonplanktonic protozoans known from Enewetak Atoll in the northern Marshalls. Most are small and live in marine sediments, although there are planktonic species as well. We photographed just a few species in passing, mostly the larger ones we found in lagoon Halimeda patches, where they are particularly abundant. Nearly all remain unidentified. We welcome IDs or corrections at uwkwaj@yahoo.com. Click on the thumbnails below to load pages for that species; for variable species, several different thumbnails may load the same page.
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