Arcella Trying To Eat Flagellates

discomorphella · Post by **discomorphella** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 2:51 pm

More spring creatures from the local pond. These small flagellates were hiding (living?) in empty pieces of spirogyra. The Arcella was crawling all over the strands of algae trying to get to them and presented a side view of the amoeba through its test. All shots taken with BX-60, DIC using UplanApo 20 or 40X and Leitz Variozoom eyepiece and 0.32X projection lens relaying to D300.

David

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:12 am

Beautiful! Very interesting subject, too.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 3:48 pm

That's amazing. They should have bought insurance.

Ecki · Post by **Ecki** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:06 pm

David,

the parasite is Pseudospora parasitica. It feeds on Spirogyra cells. If you are interested I can post some images. It is a pretty amazing species. You can recognize it from the red/brown rests of phagocytosis.

The amoeba looks like Arcella gibbosa.

regards
Eckhard

discomorphella · Post by **discomorphella** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:20 pm

Thanks for all the comments. And thanks to Eckhard for identifying the Spirogyra parasite. I was very intrigued to learn its name. Eckhard, please feel free to add images of the Pseudospora parasitica if you wish.

Thanks again,

David

Ecki · Post by **Ecki** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:57 am

David,

I uploaded the Pseudospora stuff here:

http://www.wunderkanone.de/Misc/Pseudospora/

regards
Ecki

yanyading · Post by **yanyading** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:47 pm

Very nice, however, you may want your ccd/cmos sensor cleaned :-)