An unusual (I think!) Stentor video

[billporter1456]

When I started seeing Stentors in the water from my local pond, I read just a bit about them. I found that they are “filter feeders” eating really small stuff like bacteria and algae. Then I saw a comment on a Website to the effect that Stentors have been “reported” to eat Rotifers. That’s why I was excited when I saw the body of a Rotifer within a Stentor. If you’ve watched my videos, you know that I went on to see Stentors ingest lepadella Rotifers and it became common to see the Rotifer bodies within Stentors.

So instead of being the mild-mannered eater of tiny organisms, it seems that Stentors can be real killers after all. So just how large an organism can they swallow? I now have to add bdelloid Rotifers to the list of Stentor food items. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll see a Paramecium ingested.

What makes this video worthwhile, in my opinion, is that it not only shows living bdelloid Rotifers inside of Stentors, it shows one of them escape! Maybe that’s common, but it sure surprised me.

Normally, I keep my videos short, rarely over a couple of minutes. But this one was hard to trim down that much. It started as a 12 minute video, but I edited it down to less than 5 minutes and 30 seconds. I hope you like it!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qq4T4s2 ... e=youtu.be

[Donw]

Stentors will eat just about anything they can inhale.

I've never seen a rotifer inside one, but I've often wondered. I've seen many stentors with a large vacoule containing something that was still moving, sometimes many bacteria that are still swimming, but never anything this big, and none of the victims I've watched escaped.

It is amazing what you can find in a dish of muddy water.

Really excellent video and editing!

Thanks!

Don

[billporter1456]

Hi Don,

Thanks for the kind words! Like you, I have seen some pretty large objects in food vacuoles of Stentors. Almost as large as a Paramecium. I have to think that if I watch long enough, I'll see an extra large Stentor engulf a Paramecium and I just hope I have my camera running when it happens.

I have been working with the same small container of pond water that I obtained about two months ago, just adding spring water and a few grains of rice from time to time. For some reason, the Stentor population in that 2-3 ounces of water is enormous. So when about all you have on hand are Stentors, Rotifers, and Paramecia, that's what you watch.

Regards,
Bill

[carlos.uruguay]

[John S. Mead]

As a teacher of middle schoolers, when we do our "Microsafaris" my students LOVE mixing species to see how they interact--- 6 years back we mixed stentor & blepharisma ( a pink cousin of paramecium) together and observed that within a day the stentors had decimated the blepharisma population. This link is to a video my kiddos took after the two species had been in the same petri dish for 20 hours.
Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/fk_yHG_aKIs

[Protos]

Impressive ! I loved it.

[RogelioMoreno]

Nice videos!

Rogelio

[billporter1456]

Carlos, Protos, and RogelioMoreno, thank you very much for your complimentary remarks. I am glad you enjoyed the video! I hope to make a few more if my Stentors cooperate.