Ciliate

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:53 am

Pffffff, finally a new post. I have been making many new images and movies in the past months but always in a hurry because of other work. And no time (or patience) to sort them out. The holidays were good to find a bit of time to spend with the microscope.

The trouble is, we are all fishing in the same pond and I prefer to post something (relatively) new in this forum. Impossible.

But this one was new to me. In the farm land on the other side of the street there were patches of rainwater, on some places more than 20 cm deep. and because there was a lot of rain there was water for more than a month, maybe two. We had friends over with children and the youngest son took a bit of algae. When we examined it at home we found Lacrymaria olor. I had not seen it for a very long time. But the next day it was gone. So I started to collect the water but did not find Lacrymaria anymore. But there were many other interesting organisms, Euglenophytes, ciliates, rotifers, etc.

Last week it started to freeze so the source is now covered with ice and snow. But I am happy that I could collect many organisms so near my house (50 meters).

I have no idea what kind of ciliate this is. I have not found it yet in my books. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Photographed with a Zeiss 25X planapo. My favourite objective because it gives quite o.k. DIC. Better contrast than all my other objectives. Although I still have to enhance the contrast a bit. (old equipment) The pictures are a bit the same. One with slightly darker background.

Wim

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:17 pm

beautiful photos

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:53 pm

Very nice! Consider Enchelyodon (E. elegans, perhaps, if the size range is close to ~180-200 µm...if smaller, maybe E. armatus, if bigger E. vorax).

See Kahl, Wimpertiere oder Ciliata, vol 1, 1930, p. 111, and p. 104. The Micro*scope site is down at the moment (a recurring problem, unfortunately), but I believe William Bourland uploaded some good pictures of Enchelyodon elegans to his Idaho collection, there.

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:19 am

Thank you Bruce, That could be the right ID. The size is indeed about right. It also has the three dikinetidal dorsal brush rows (one with a monokinetidal "tail" visible in the bottom image) under the long rod-shaped extrusomes. The more you read, the more you see. :-)

It seems to be related to Dileptus and Litonotus. They were also in my sample. I'll try to post them later.

Wim

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Mon Jan 21, 2013 6:51 am

It seems to be related to Dileptus and Litonotus.

Yes, they're all hungry Haptorids.

Denis Lynn puts Enchelyodon in the family Trachelophyllidae (Ciliated Protozoa, p. 370), but I understand the indefatigable W. Foissner wants to move them to their own family, because they don't have scales (lepidosomes).

A good article on a new species: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3904701017

The more you read, the more you see.

Oh, yes. And getting better at seeing is strangely pleasurable.

naturephoto1 · Post by **naturephoto1** » Mon Jan 21, 2013 7:46 am

Wim,

Beautiful images.

Rich

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:03 pm

Very nice shot...did you used a 25x DIC slider or 100x one

best
arturo

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:23 am

Thank you all,

Interesting article Bruce,

And your remark is very interesting Arturo. There is no DIC slider for the 25X planapo (I believe) but indeed I use the 100X 1,25 plan achro. It might be an idea to make a list with good combinations. I have made such a list but it was a paper list and it is somewhere in a box. I can't find it after I moved house.

Wim

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 12:33 am

hi Wim,
some times ago i done a list but i need to refresh it:
http://www.microscopeitaly.it/2009/11/3 ... -versione/

best
arturo

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Thu Jan 24, 2013 3:27 am

Hello Arturo,

Thank you. I will see if I can make a list too. I have a Leitz 50X NPL objective that also works with DIC on the Zeiss microscope. I'll look up which prism.

Wim