Ian hit about a month ago, and west coast Florida is still plagued with red tide and flesh eating bacteria. What happens at a microscopic level for these blooms to happen?
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I hope this is allowed as it isn’t really an answer, but there’s a home experiment you can do with some basic supplies that demonstrates this, sort of: the [Winogradsky column](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winogradsky_column).
Basically, dig up some pond mud, mix with some basic nutrients (calcium, carbon, and sulfur); pack into a glass column and let incubate in light for a month; the microbes from the pond should sort themselves into different strata within the column, supplying specific nutrients up and down the different guilds/layers in the column.
In the end, you are reproducing the eventual re-organization of the ecosystem into a functional and structured community. Pretty cool.
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