Despite a few dry days, the ditches and ruts in the fields are still wet and have produced some interesting samples.
Eudorina
You could be forgiven for thinking that the pictures are of a Pyrex plate of Brussels sprouts but they're not!
These are plentiful and bloom in the light. Illuminating the sample with a white LED caused the population to increase rapidly, tumbling into the light patch in the dish as though somebody had turned on a hose full of them! Their size ranged from about 10 to 200 micron diameter and you can see the faint ring that marks the edge of the gel in which the green parts live. Just visible through the microscope but not really in the pictures were the flagellae by which the alga propel themselves. Our theory is that, seen from behind, they rotate in an anti-clockwise direction as they travel. We need input from mainland Europe to see if they this is a particularly British trait, like driving on the left.
Showing great interest in the Eudorina were a number of well-fed rotifers, including one that obligingly stayed still and allowed me to photograph her with her eggs, one of which hatched as I watched.
It's hard to see but I think that there were 5 eggs attached to the female rotifer.
I believe that the young rotifers were males but I cannot prove that.Their passion for speed and their lack of gut is my only evidence!
Closterium
- green banana-shaped desmid. In this picture taken through the
x40 objective you can see the swarm of tiny dots in the very tip.
These dots moved continuously. I'd like to know what they are!
It's good to see that EU directives dictating that bananas should be straight have not affected Closterium, which come straight, slightly curved or crescent-shaped. They move slowly, like some other desmids and diatoms, with a gliding motion. How?
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