Brachyspira? (help with ID...)

[mtuell]

I was inspecting a drop of rain water that collected in the sand box - a real treasure trove!

Anyway, I saw a few of these guys spiraling around. They look an awful lot like Brachyspira, but I can't seem to find a scaled picture. The ones I saw were 60 to a little over 100 microns in length.

These are 40x DIC on a Diaphot pictures on APS-C sensor with an actual picture, with the same setup, of a 10 micron scale overlayed in Photoshop.






Some of them had small features in them, and some were "smooth" like this one.



Any ideas? They seem too large and too loosely coiled for many of the spirochaete bacteria I saw photos of.

Thanks!
Mike

[actinophrys]

These are spirilla rather than spirochaetes, which are like you say smaller, and also move differently. Spirochaetes are flexible and use axial filaments to squirm about. Spirilla are more or less rigid with external flagella; the shape takes advantage of the torque those produce to rotate through the water like a screw drive. There are a number of genera from different groups, but I don't think any can be identified by looks alone.

[mtuell]

Ah, that looks right. Thanks!

[carlos.uruguay]

Very interesting!
See Fig 4
http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrende ... obtype=pdf