Field of Science

Pond Microforay part 0.5

Don't have the time to process all the images, but here's a heliozoan and some flagellates from today. By the way, our ancient CCD camera is too slow to capture pictures of...amoebae. Yeah, you know your imaging equipment needs to upgrading when... (it's a decent camera for plants though. Just really fucking slow.)

Actinophryid or a Centrohelid? Actinophrys is a bit more 'bubbly', if I recall... (Heliozoa is not a real [monophyletic] group) Edit: most likely centrohelid...

Mystery flagellate. A non-photosynthetic euglenid, perhaps? Or something that's been rather mangled?

Wow this image is shitty... but Bicosoeca is brutal for imaging... this is a small sessile heteroflagellate with a lorica (the little barely-visible cup-like structure). And it hunts:

Captured this image just as the flagellate retracted back into its lorica after seemingly grabbing something. I don't know much about its hunting tactics, may be worth looking into someday...

I spent 2h looking for bicosoecids and choanoflagellates (no success with the latter) since I've seen them before in that sample. Which is, by the way, a freshwater one from a local pond. That may actually be useful information for ID purposes...

Got more coming later, eventually, hopefully soon-ish... (apparently, offline life needs tending to from time to time)

2 comments:

  1. Those are sweet pics. I just got a tchotchke at a science vendor fair that was a book of postcards with microscopy pics on them. These pics are nicer than some of those... hmm, business opportunity?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! =D Our lab has some really nice scopes for leeching off, so it's not really anything I did...

    I would rather expose people to the wonders of the microscopic world for free, especially since I'm still learning how to do half-decent microscopy. However, it would be nice to assemble some sort of photo book once I get good enough, and once I have legitimate access to a scope for personal use. Right now I just kind of quietly sneak in a few protist slides after finishing my actually research stuff (plant cell biol), usually late in the evening when no one's around... >_>

    Another photo book idea I had was...moss+lichen 'forests' on tree trunks! That would be sooo cool! There's a whole vertical world out there... (teeming with awesome protists too...)

    ReplyDelete

Markup Key:
- <b>bold</b> = bold
- <i>italic</i> = italic
- <a href="http://www.fieldofscience.com/">FoS</a> = FoS