The skin of the earth is home to pac-man-like protists

Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least among people over 30. But the first study to characterize protists in soils from around the world—co-authored by Smithsonian scientists—found that the most common groups of soil protists behave exactly like Pac-Man: moving through the soil matrix, gobbling up bacteria. Their results are published in Science Advances.