Fishing at Willow Creek

This post was supposed to feature unbelievable fishing exploits accompanied by photos of huge fish (in my other blog) and a smiling angler. Luckily I brought along a few specimen bottles so I didn't go home entirely empty-handed. Sometimes it pays to have two great hobbies.












The algae samples from willow creek held a number of diatom species that I wasn't familiar with. Not that I'm familiar with diatoms, it's just that the shapes and sizes of these were different than I was used to as a fledgling biologist. Here is one of the longer ones, about 150 microns long.

Here is a nicely patterned one.

And perhaps the empty frustule of a similar one.

A Closterium desmid. These are actually quite interesting in that they have little moving bodies in both tips. These are crystals that are powered via Brownian movement and are supposedly used to tell them which end is up.

Another Closterium Desmid.

One of those amoeba with radial arms. This is the first one in which I've seen a pseudopod extending from the body, if that's what it really is. I'm now getting a little confused...might this be a centroheliozoan? The radial arms would suggest so, the pseudopod points to an amoeba. Anybody know what this is?








 
Here is a picture of a Phacus, one of the Euglenids. This is a gorgeous creature in life and can be quite graceful in exploring it's drop of water. It's hard to describe what it actually looks like...it bears a certain resemblance to a 3 bladed arrowhead if you know what that looks like.









Here is another view of the same individual, this time showing the flagella. These little guys move forward at the flagella end and spin gracefully along their path.