Field of Science

Pond Microforay part 2.5

Preceded by parts 0.5 and 1.5. This time in decent DIC!

Another Cyclidium with a sail-like 'membranelle' - the haplokineties of the oral ciliature. I kind of like this picture...
The story behind 'membranelle' is that this row of cilia behaves much like a membrane would, thus leading microscopists of the past to consider is as an actual membrane. Later it turned out the 'membranelle' has nothing to do with membranes, but the name kinda stuck. I've had an instructor who was viciously against 'membranelle', and despised the use of that word. Same instructor also hates 'protozoa', so I learned to be very careful with that word...


A collage of random flagellates (and a spore-like thing). Feel free to identify A,B and D.

A random amoeba. Discosea?

Coleps, the "hyena of the protist world"! They will eat pretty much anything...

Cyst, perhaps of Actinophrys sol ('heliozoan'). Which can also be apparently violent enough to engulf an entire Colpodium(ciliate).

Collection of more heliozoans, likely centrohelids.

I kind of like the bottom left one...

Almost definitely a centrohelid, which are now with a Crhaptophytes/Kraptophytes*. Note the messy spicules near the cell body. Also note the centroplast in the middle. The axopodia (long thin threads sticking out) are microtubule-based structures which are used for capturing stuff (via kinetocysts - the little blobs on the threads); they can also contract rapidly (1/30 s!). This may well be Raphidiophrys, but I can't say for sure.

*I now have the story behind this. Apparently, they wanted to name the group 'Craptophytes' in one of the papers, but a reviewer rejected it because it didn't include the Katablepharids in the name. They considered changing it to 'Kraptophytes', but got worried that the name might actually go through, and may even set a rather questionable trend... so they named them 'Hacrobia'. Colloquially, however, people still often refer to them as Cr(h)aptophytes. There was an 'h' in the version told to me by a postdoc, so I now have a choice between the following: 'Craptophytes', 'Kraptophytes' and 'Crhaptophytes'. The latter looks the weirdest, and blatantly includes the Haptophytes. And the 'crap' is a little more subtle. So I'll keep using Crhapto.

And finally, a random metazoan. Daphnia?

And that's it for this particular microforay. Got loads of own microscopy to do tonight, maybe I can sneak in some more pond samples too while I'm at it ^_^

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