2nd Observation

I went to the lab last Wednesday and spent a solid 4 hours in the lab looking at all the micro-organisms and taking pictures and videos and identifying them all with the books and lots of Dr. McFarland's help, then finally editing all the pictures to be able to use in the blog.  At the beginning of last week Dr. McFarland put one piece of beta fish food into each MicroAquarium to help encourage the micro-organisms to grow.  I could tell that there were many more micro-organisms in the MicroAquarium this time I view it.  Shown below are some pictures and videos so you can see what I got to see through the microscope lens. 

This is an Actinosphaerium sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 169 fig. 394-395).  The Actinosphaerium was not moving in any way, but I thought it was interesting and took a picture of it.  In this picture Dr. McFarland and I could not quite tell what was going on, at first we thought that it was just two Actinosphaerium that were possibly dividing, then with a closer look it almost looks like there are the two dividing in the middle at the same time they are dividing again, if that makes any sense.  You can also see there is something dark in the middle, I'm not sure if that is something that the two organisms are trying to eat or if it's just something that is lying on top or under the Actinosphaerium in the MicroAquarium. 

 

 

This is an Amoeba sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 99 fig. 194-197).  In this video you can see how the Amoeba scoots itself along as its mood of transportation. 

 

 

This is an Anisoonema sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 53-54 fig. 78).  This organism has two very long flagella that protrude on either end of to help it move around the MicroAquarium. 

 

 

In this picture we are looking at the large brown mass in the middle.  This organism is a Centropyxis sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 95 fig. 184).  I thought this one was very interesting, although there was no movement by the organism when I saw this shot I knew there was something significant so I took a picture and identified it.

 

 

This organism is a Chaetontus sp. (Pennak 1989 pg. 165 fig. 7). 

 

 

This is a Euplotes sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 124 fig. 260)  This organism reminds me very much of the Tachysoma that I will show later.

 

 

This is Merismopedia sp. (Lund 1995 pg. 198-199 fig. 378-379).  This is actually a type of cyanobacteria.  It is very small, even when magnified to the maximum magnification on the microscopes. 

 

This is a Nematoda (Raninis 1996 pg. 231 fig. 110).  The Nematoda is a very active micro-organism.  It flails around randomly and looks crazy.  It is also a much larger organism than the Merismopedia.  Once I found the Nematoda in the microscope I could look very closely at the MicroAquarium at the place where the microscope is aimed and faintly see the NemaToda flailing around. 

 

 

This is the Tachysoma sp. (Patterson 1996 pg. 125 fig. 265) that I mentioned earlier.  It looks like a little animal just crawling around the MicroAquarium, it moves very quickly and never stays still. 

 

 

There is something that I did see in the MicroAquarium that I was wondering what it was and so I took some pictures and asked Dr. McFarland, I was very interested in what it was.  When I asked him he said it was dead and that I could delete the picture and I was very disappointed because I thought I had found something cool. 

 

 

I saw a lot of very interesting organisms in my MicroAquarium this past week and can defiantly tell that the number of organisms is increasing.  I can't wait to see how much everything has grown from the first observation the day we made them to the final observation in a few more weeks.