Body of a Vorticella

I spent a bit of time watching this Vorticella and did some optical sectioning at 1000X. The first image is somewhat odd in that it shows a really distended contractile vacuole (CV). It did eventually empty so I'm pretty sure its a CV.

The second image shows the macronucleous nicely, its the large reverse "C" or "J" at the outside of the cell. The micronucleous, which is situated nearby cannot be seen without staining.

This next image shows a normally sized contractile vacuole. It's the hole in the center of the specimen.

This last image focuses on the food vacuoles. They are the smaller spheres distributed throughout the specimen.

A stacked Coleps

 I took 14 images manually and stacked them using Picolay. Still learning the new DIC scope and hope there will soon be many other pictures. Not sure what was going on with this fellow but he/she was quiet the whole time I was taking the stacking photos while his siblings/kids were scurrying around the slide.

Possible Caenorhabditis elegans worm and a hungry ciliate

 After spinning a small water sample in my centrifuge at 4000 rpm for about 5 minutes I found a complex sample of specimens. In it were two nematodes, both fully extended that did not act like normal nematodes but looked dead. While all the ciliates, diatoms and bacteria were still very active the same did not apply to the worms. Perhaps the centrifuge killed or incapacitated them. I've since been informed this is one of the nematodes.

 

This ciliate was scampering around the slide, gobbling up diatoms as fast as it could find them. 

Coleps with Stylonychia

In one of my pond water jars I have a healthy population of Stylonichia going, at least until the present. The culture was full of what I believe are Stylonichia and a huge, perhaps larger number of much smaller unidentified ciliates. Well those smaller ciliates are now nowhere to be found but the larger Stylonychia are still evident in large numbers, seemingly actively looking for their next meal. What I found interesting is their behavior towards this lone Coleps I found; each Stylonychia that came near checked it out and rapidly retreated. I wonder what avoidance mechanisms are at work here.

 

Vorticella in telotroch stage and an interesting arcella

 I was trying out some plastic Petri dish covers as wave plates on a slide with many vorticella. Most of them were sessile with just the odd one free swimming around the slide. As water evaporated from the slide a scan of the slide revealed that most had dropped their stalk and stopped cilia rotation. Was this a result of preparation for a dry spell? 

In addition while scanning I found an interesting Arcella, one with pseudopodia that I had never encountered before.

A flatworm (Platyhelminthes) plus a stylonichia separation

 Today I found a new flatworm in the “pond” taken from the La Salle river last fall. I was looking for a dividing ciliate to video record when I ran into this fellow. 

 

I finally got a video of the tail end of the separation of a Stylonichia species. The whole process takes about 15 to 20 minutes (very rough estimate) and I caught the last few seconds in this video.

https://youtu.be/Hkjnh2QUHOE?feature=shared

Another dividing amoeba and a new ciliate; Genus Vaginicola

 Had another great morning at the microscope with a number of interesting finds. Special was what might be another example of a couple of testate amoebas copulating. They weren’t moving although lobose pseudopodia were in evidence. The following image is a stack of three separate pictures.

Arcella hemisphaerica or Antarcella atava

Another specimen was from the Genus Vaginicola, a loricated peritrich ciliate. This video shows a pair feeding with their revolving cirri while periodically retreating to their vase shaped lorica.

An interesting morning at the new microscope…

 I’ve been poring over water samples collected last fall with my new (old) DIC microscope. Today I encountered a double whammy with a couple of conjugating specimens, one unidentified, the other an Arcella species. Here’s a picture of the unidentified couple seemingly transferring something between them. Above them, to the left is a voyeuristic Arcella.

Here is a video of the conjugating/copulation Arcella species. I followed them for some time but very little changed from what is seen in the video.