And news: off to Halifax to start a MSc on protist diversity and cell structure in June; among my first tasks will be to bring the scope up to sexy standards. And then learn some TEM! (are electron micrographs allowed here, by the way?)
A dividing arcellinid (Arcella sp. here): the new shell is the clear one; thecae tend to "rust" over time and turn brown.
Frontonia full of tasty diatoms!
The giant Bursaria are notable for rapidly deciliating ciliates, like Paramecia, upon contact -- and completely by the time the ciliates pass the gullet. Bursarias also have this annoying habit of exploding when you look at them, thus releasing half-digested and not-yet-digested Paramecia into the surroundings. Conveniently enough, those Paramecia are free of cilia, so you can get a really nice crisp view of the pellicle!
Paramecium with a sporulating Holospora infection, from culture. The large refractile structure is... no, not the macronucleus. It is a micronucleus severely bloated by bacterial spores. Holospora spend part of their lives in nuclei, feeding on the chromatin and later sporulating. It's just one example of bacterial endosymbionts flourishing inside protist cells; not all are parasitic either.
Incidentally, I found a clump of Peritrichs with bacteria in the macronucleus (some dividing; arrowhead); this has apparently not been recorded in the literature before, and I lost the critters before getting around to culture them =(
Ok, this is probably enough to slow down the loading time. More later!
Cheers,
-Psi-
). In case you've missed it, here is her "new" blog: 