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.