Ciliates

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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gpmatthews
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Ciliates

Post by gpmatthews »

More from my windowsill sample

Two shots, same individual. Stylonichia?
Image
Image

The next three are the same individual. Ident? -
Image
Image
Image

All pictures:

Microscope: Zeiss Standard
Ocular: Zeiss KPL-W 10/18
Objective: Leitz 40/0.7 NPL Fluotar ICT
Substage: Leitz ICT 0.9 NA
Flash
Canon EOS 500D

Images are crops
Graham

Though we lean upon the same balustrade, the colours of the mountain are different.

Mitch640
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Post by Mitch640 »

Nice detail. Where did the colors come from?

gpmatthews
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Post by gpmatthews »

Mitch - some colouration is natural, some due to the use of polarised light to achieve DIC and the slight blueness of the last three images is a white balance issue.
Graham

Though we lean upon the same balustrade, the colours of the mountain are different.

Bruce Taylor
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Post by Bruce Taylor »

Trying to identify these little hypotrichs lures beginners like me into a taxonomical quagmire. :)

The rigid-bodied ones tend to be slightly easier. The fellow in your first picture has an angular Stylonychia-like shape, a sharply incised AZM with "lapels," and thick , dangly transverse cirri. It certainly looks like a Stylonychia, but I don't see the three caudal cirri that would confirm it. Perhaps they are there, but out of focus? If not, perhaps it is Parastylonychia. But as long as we're considering other rigid-bodied hypotrichs, how can we know he is not Sterkiella (Histrio) or Histriculus? So we squint at the pictures and wonder: are the marginal cirri "confluent at the rear"? Are the frontventral cirri "linear"? How many macronuclei am I seeing?

Hmmm.

A little frustrated, we go on to the second creature, one of the dreaded small, flexible hypotrichs. This one is wonderfully clear. We have a very nice view of the midventral cirri, and the oral membranelles are raised in beautiful relief. Marginal and transverse cirri are nice and clear. It has a multi-noded macronucleus (four at least, possibly six)...that should rule out a few organisms! Maybe a Gastrostyla? That arrangement of midventral cirri suggests Keronopsis. Reading up about Keronopsis, you find yourself being sucked into the nomenclatural vortex of the Urostyloidea, where researchers (with access to silver-impregnation and electron microscopy!) are struggling to arrive at firm defiinitions of Holosticha, Anteholosticha, Paraholosticha, Kerona, Keronopsis, Psudokeronopsis...and slowly we begin to realize that, to identify this one little guy with confidence we need to know a heck of a lot more than we do! And it will take years to get there...

So we (and by "we" I mean "me," of course. :) ) heave a mighty sigh, say...gee, I dunno. :D
Last edited by Bruce Taylor on Tue Mar 20, 2012 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

gpmatthews
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Post by gpmatthews »

Bruce - I think we are in the same boat!

Thanks for the thoughts, anyway.
Graham

Though we lean upon the same balustrade, the colours of the mountain are different.

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