Here are two species of marine diatoms that stick to each other to form chains and use the same "biological glue" to attach themselves to sand grains. They are reasonably large for diatoms, I was using a 10x objective. I've tried to capture the three dimensional shape of the first one in the last cross-eyed stereo image.
Dave
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Full Frame 10x Objective
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Cropped
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Full Frame 10x objective
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Cropped
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Cross-eyed stereo of the first
Sticky Marine Diatoms
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Sticky Marine Diatoms
Last edited by micro_pix on Sun May 09, 2021 7:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Sticky Marine Diatoms
very nice.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Sticky Marine Diatoms
Beautiful and informative!
That stereo pair really lets me understand the shape.
--Rik
That stereo pair really lets me understand the shape.
--Rik
Re: Sticky Marine Diatoms
Thanks for the kind comments.
As well as forming the sticky pads, in the centre of the first photo you can see where the sticky mucilage (Extracellular Polymeric Substance) has been excreted more generally, trapping organic detritus. In the same sample of sand there were also tiny “mats” of silica grains bound by a similar mucilage but whatever deposited it had moved on. I did find an interesting paper (sponsored by the oil industry) that points to one of the geological impacts of these biofilms.
http://www.petrog.com/ws2-files/papers/ ... nglass.pdf
Dave
Here's one of the sand grain "mats", it's about 5mm across and 2 or 3 grains deep. The grains are hard to separate.
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As well as forming the sticky pads, in the centre of the first photo you can see where the sticky mucilage (Extracellular Polymeric Substance) has been excreted more generally, trapping organic detritus. In the same sample of sand there were also tiny “mats” of silica grains bound by a similar mucilage but whatever deposited it had moved on. I did find an interesting paper (sponsored by the oil industry) that points to one of the geological impacts of these biofilms.
http://www.petrog.com/ws2-files/papers/ ... nglass.pdf
Dave
Here's one of the sand grain "mats", it's about 5mm across and 2 or 3 grains deep. The grains are hard to separate.
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Re: Sticky Marine Diatoms
This is really excellent. Very informative. Thanks for posting.
Re: Sticky Marine Diatoms
Beautiful little organisms, aren't they? The sand grains are also lovely little rocks, delightful to a geologist's eye!
I go by "Jim" in real life, "RoxnDox" on here...