Biosphere 2, the site of the First International Volvox Meeting in 2011.

This year’s Volvox meeting, as with the previous two, will feature an image/video/arts competition. Erik Hanschen, a graduate student in the Michod lab, has kindly granted me permission to post the winning entry in the poetry contest at the first Volvox meeting: a sonnet in honor of Chlamydomonas.

An Ode to Unicellularity – Erik Hanschen

Shall I compare thee to a carteri?
Thou art more simple no somatic cell:
Rough waters cold beneath the nighttime sky,
And rot’fers make life grim where thoust doth dwell:

Sometime the eyespot doth guide thee too true,
And often is your action photoshock;
And every div’sion doth start this anew,
Migration daily steady as a clock;

But thy ephemeral pond shall too soon fade,
Nor shall Death brag thou given up thy life;
Then hope thy diploid spores doth land in shade,
Survival in this niche is such a strife;

So long as we biologists do see,
An ode to unicellularity.