Blog 4 Week 4

Good evening one and all, well, here is my last post for our project sad isn't it? But hey, I have added a ton of pictures for my final blog. Interestingly enough almost all of my pictures are taken from along the edges of my aquarium there seemed to be an abundance of microlife along there.

I am going to have to ask patience because at the moment I can not for the life of me find my note book giving all the references though I can have Dr, Macfarland attest that I did so because I worked with him on a bunch of these.

Just below is an amoeba which are just fascinating. They move via their cytoplasmic movement with in. It almost looks like it is just oozing and flowing down a hill when it moves. I had not really taken into account that this could be an organism at first because if you don't watch for a little they don't move fast enough to catch your eye. Which I have found to be true of many of these organisms.




The next two pictures are of a green alga called chladophora it is a filamentous alga that has over the weeks been growing rapidly. Interestingly enough this is due to getting sunlight. Which is why the micro aquariums have had to be kept in a darker room so the alga don't take over.


These little guys in the next couple pictures are cyanobacteria. I couldn't get a close enough shot but if you were to get close you would see they are green in color. At first I just thought they didn't moved but they I noticed they sort of drift along. Very cool.Now this guy is very interesting. We are not a hundred percent sure but we are pretty sure it is a diffluga. It sticks this long almost tongue shaped cilliate out and inches itself along.


Here is a picture from the internet showing it (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/PDB/Images/Sarcodina/Difflugia/Difflugia.jpg&imgrefurl=http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/PDB/Images/Sarcodina/Difflugia/index.html&h=378&w=513&sz=35&tbnid=rizNqpHH2-AJ::&tbnh=97&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddifflugia&hl=en&usg=__16ddGANH9yQHvrdLTafnB88SqHQ=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=5&ct=image&cd=1) Once again a picture of an Arcella...
This particualar organism I think I said was something but was wrong. I looked him up in the books with the help of Dr. MacFarland but since I can't find that right now I just thought I'd say that for the record. This creature moves very, very quickly and is all over. It moves it cilliates in a circular motion and can make it self twist and turn on a blink of an eye.
This is another creature, that we never figured out it's true identity, it had that tongue like look again which moved it, but we


Finally, below are a few diatoms. The first one is a fan shaped and the other is from a different class.


I have really enjoyed doing these microaquariums. So much so I am taking mine home so I can show people and perhaps continue to look and learn about all the amazing things that can't exist in such a small space. I think Vorticella are one of my absolute favorites and will probably spend more time learning about then also make them the organis I do for my paper. Anyways, this is Suzanne signing out...