How to Use alga in a Sentence

alga

noun
  • The secret to photosynthesis passed to the alga and all its heirs.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 6 Dec. 2021
  • One microscopic alga, hidden in a canal on an island at the edge of a great river.
    — Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Just as light is both a wave and a particle, the fungus and alga are both individuals and parts of a whole.
    — Erica Gies, Scientific American, 1 June 2017
  • In Florida and Texas, red tides are caused by an alga called Karenia brevis.
    — Tom Metcalfe, NBC News, 13 July 2019
  • Every animal, plant, fungus and alga on the planet rose from the results of this old partnership.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 20 Jan. 2011
  • Once the water temperature returns to normal, any polyps that haven’t starved to death will host another alga.
    — Erik Stokstad, Science | AAAS, 8 Dec. 2020
  • And seaweed is really just an extremely large alga—in fact, seaweeds are also called macroalgae.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 16 Mar. 2020
  • Seagrass has succeeded by becoming alga-like in some of its molecules and cells, all while keeping hold of some bonus land-plant traits.
    — David George Haskell, Big Think, 27 Mar. 2026
  • The alga draws energy from sunlight and produces sugars, which the bacterium uses as fuel.
    — Ashley P. Taylor, Discover Magazine, 22 Sep. 2012
  • This alga is a critical food source for brine shrimp and other salt-tolerant species, which attract migratory shorebirds.
    — Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2021
  • Nakayama and his team searched for the alga by scooping seawater samples from the Pacific Ocean using a fine-mesh net.
    — Jake Buehler, Quanta Magazine, 24 Nov. 2025
  • Near the back, leaning on the vase, is an alga from an herbarium of strange, incredible shapes, which could have been invented by Max Ernst.
    — Louis Benech, WSJ, 28 Mar. 2020
  • In high tide, when less light reaches the alga, the crystals may capture some of the sunlight and pass it on to the surrounding chloroplasts for photosynthesis.
    — Kai Kupferschmidt, Science | AAAS, 13 Apr. 2018
  • Yet here in this massive pool swirls more than a million liters of Nannochloropsis, a salt-loving alga that flourishes on the brackish water pumped from below.
    — Amy Nordrum, IEEE Spectrum, 30 May 2018
  • The consequent flood of data is helping researchers determine which genes are behind a coral’s, an alga’s or a bacterium’s fragility or resilience.
    — The Economist, 15 Mar. 2018
  • The lagoons are home to a variety of microorganisms, including Dunaliella salina, an alga responsible for the red hue.
    — Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2021
  • In return, the bacterium processes nitrogen gas into ammonium, which the alga needs.
    — Ashley P. Taylor, Discover Magazine, 22 Sep. 2012
  • Aerial detection using drones Lichens are complex life forms resulting from a symbiotic partnership between a fungus and an alga.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 4 Nov. 2025
  • For example, since the 1960s, scientists have shown that a type of alga shows a daily cycle in its photosynthesis, even without a nucleus.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 16 May 2012
  • This distinctive form of the freshwater alga Aegagropila linnaei is exceedingly rare.
    — National Geographic, 8 Sep. 2016
  • By looking at frozen samples under an electron microscope, scientists were able to zero in on nanostructures in the alga’s cells that are about 1000 times smaller than a human hair is thick.
    — Kai Kupferschmidt, Science | AAAS, 13 Apr. 2018
  • Although the precise benefits of this association remain unclear, researchers generally think that the salamander embryo benefits from the oxygen produced by the alga while the alga benefits from the nitrogenous waste of the growing embryo.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alga.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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