Tres? Sure!

So this week I went to Maryland...wait this is my Botany blog! Oops :) I went in Wednesday before and after lab to observe my little guys and I found so much! My poor midge died :( I found him at the top of my tank, You can look on the bright side though, the rest of my organisms have enough food for these next couple weeks. All my little guys have gotten so big! I was searching through my tank and I saw two stentors swimming by and I chased them down and followed them until I found a whole family of them! At the bottom right corner of my tank I counted eighteen or so stentors. Dr. McFarland said that these were all probably daughters and sons of the single stentor I saw on the first observation! I was in the lab from one until three and after lab was over and I got a couple pictures for this week :) Enjoy!

This is an Oscillatoria. Just the genus name, but it is a cynobacteria. These little guys were everywhere that I looked! Small ones, medium sized ones, but this guy was the biggest one! I picked this picture because I loved the way he has twisted himself in a knot in this  picture. Good timing I guess :)

So I found out something new this week about my Stentors! You see the small white dots near the top? Well they extend down the neck and halfway down toward the base. I asked Dr. McFarland what these were and at first he didn't know either. Well we searched through a couple books and finally found the answer! Those are macronuclei. I am not sure if they are completely separate, or if they are connected. I hope to find this out soon :) If you watch the video at the bottom you can see them very clearly!

So these little guys are Rotifers. That isn't their species name, or their genus name, it is their family name. These little guys are very diverse and I have a million of them! I love this picture because you can see their profile picture (hehe) and the view from the top down. (I left my notes back in Tennessee so when I get back I will fix this caption)

Ohhhhh :) This guy is so cool! If you go back a couple blogs you will see a picture with the same name. Yep this is the same one! I said in that caption that they would break apart, and sure enough here is one of them all grown up! He is a flat worm :) I counted at least four different ones while I was scanning my tank. They loved to find each other and just hang out like siblings do. Oh and they all loved finding my stentors and bumping them and scaring them half to death!

 

Yay another video! :) Ok so the point of this video is so you can see the membranelles on my stentor. A membranelle is a little hair like part that wiggles back and forth to move the water and bring food to it. In this video they look like they are spinning around the top of him, but they are stationary I promise! If you have any vorticellas in your tank, you may be able to see the cilla around their head; this is the same thing except larger! It is a short video just ten seconds and you don't even hear my voice this time! :) Until next week!