Blobules I Have Known

[submarine_bells]

I spent some of this afternoon (between data collection runs) playing with my microscope, and found some intriguing wee beasties lurking in a fragment of algae from my aquarium. So I edited up some video footage of them, and offer for your viewing pleasure (?) Stuff from my aquarium: Blobules I have known.


David Attenborough I ain't. The video

Comments

[submarine_bells]

Dunno for sure, but most likely single-celled algae. Most other things I've seen around that size that moved like that were algae.

[jinian]

There's a very clear muscular gizzard on the first one, so I say definitely rotifer. That's the main diagnostic feature that sticks in my mind. (Description of gizzard here; bdelloid pics with teeny red eyes here.)

Bdelloids are not known to have males or any sexual reproduction at all. It's not clear to me, though, whether their parthenogenesis is via gamete formation and self-fertilization or just converting a somatic cell to an embryo. The former at least mixes up the chromosomal assignments of the genes, which is a bit better for their diversity than just cloning.

[submarine_bells]

Cool! It's great to have confirmation of at least one of my guesses from someone who knows what they're talking about! Thanks for the links to the Micrographia site, too - that looks like it'll be a fascinating resource to browse through!

[expandranon]

Bother. Youtube's being all ass and not playing the video. It'll play any other video, just not yours.

[expandranon]

So of course, the moment this finished posting, the video finally started playing. I could watch it for hours.

[submarine_bells]

Hee! I'm rather like that with the microscope at present. Sadly I have to put it aside and concentrate on studystuff for far too much of the time. Ah well, such is life. :-7

[kim_huett]

Lovely bit of video but being me I can't help but think that an edited version of this should have as its soundtrack the theme to Trapdoor, "Squirmy worms, slugs and snails that drop upon your skin. Horrid things with tentacles that want to pull you in."