Astomatous Ciliates living in earthworm guts, image added

[Gerd]

This is an astomatous ciliate of the genus Anoplophrya, living in earthworm guts.
These strange ciliates live as commensals in the gut of compost worms which can
easily be found in your compost heap.
The ciliates are completely colorless and do not have any mouth organelles, feeding is osmotrophic.
The first pic is focused on the cell surface, you can see the basal bodies of the long cilia and some vacuoles as well.



The second pic is focused on the middle of the cell with the macronucleus.
There is a big macronucleus longitudinal in the middle of the cell,
and a small micronucleus near the cell margin opposite to the vacuoles.
Pictures are taken with a 63x Objective with a picture width of 180 µm.
Thank you for looking..

[JH]

Interesting, do you know if they are parasitic or harmless guests?

Regards Jörgen

[carlos.uruguay]

Wonderful!
Thanks for sharing this information

[Jacek]

interesting and nice pictures

[arturoag75]

Superb shots...thanks

[Brian Matsumoto]

I love your photographs, but I have a question. Were these fellows harvested directly from the worm's gut? The background is very clean and clear and I was wondering if there was a washing procedure or if you cultured the organisms and then photographed them in clean medium?

Brian

[Gerd]

Thank you very much for the kind comments and questions !

@ Jörgen: that is an interesting question, not completely answered in literature.
I think, they are commensalic guests, harmless. I sometimes found worms with about 400 ciliates inside. These worms did not show any indication of harmful parasites.

@ Brian: my preparation includes a little washing indeed. When preparing the worms in physiologic salt solution I collect the liberated ciliates in physiologic salt solution too.
So i have two steps of clean medium and finally there are nearly no reminding deposits from the gut content.

Thanks again,

Gerd

[flyer2o12]

I especially like the first image! Can you give a step by step on the procedure you briefly described to Brian?

[Bruce Taylor]

Very interesting organism! I too would be interested in a more detailed description of the procedure for removing and isolating specimens, if it is not too much trouble.

[Gerd]

Here is another image of Anoplphrya sp., living specimen stained with
Acridine Orange to show Macronucleus and Micronucleus in Fluorescence.
Blue excitation with royal blue Led, Leitz I3 Filtercube.



For the preparation : you can see the proportions of the ciliates under the dissecting microscope here :
http://vimeo.com/76975585

First i anesthetize the worms in 50% Alcohol for about 1 minute.
Make sure to wash out the alcohol well after that.
Then i add about 20 ml physiologic salt solution and cut the worms into 2 or three pieces.
Squeeze out the gut content, result can be seen in the video.
Now i take a Pasteur pipette and catch the ciliates and collect
them in fresh physiologic salt solution.
From there, you can put them to a slide and observate them under the microscope
or take them to a fixative and do any staining as well.

[Franz Neidl]

Hello Gerd!

also your video is very interesting. Thank you for sharing!
Many greetings from Italy!

Franz

[carlos.uruguay]

Tell me Gerd,
is there any way to observe the ciliates without killing the worm?
Regards
carlos

[Bruce Taylor]

Thank you for the information and the video, Gerd.

[RogelioMoreno]

Very nice pictures and specimen.

Rogelio

[Gerd]

Thank you all for your nice comments !

@ Carlos : perhaps you might check, if some ciliates leave the worm,
when the worm defecates. I never watched ciliates outside the worm, but
i did not explicitly look for that.

Gerd