Final Observation

My last observation in the lab was great.  The activity in the micro-aquarium increased every week from the beginning, which made this very fun for me.  I never saw my water bears again, but I did observe other new species I had seen yet.  One of which was the Bacillaria paradoxa, a fascinating organism also known as the carpenter's ruler.  I actually had an audience with me as we watched this species sling itself around the aquarium.  This species is segmented and each cell grows into another until it has great length.  It moves like a slinky and can go in opposite directions.

Figure 1. Bacillaria paradoxa with a Litonotus at the bottom.

I identified the Bacillaria in The Fresh Water Algae book (Prescott, p. 241).  I noticed a few Litonotuses; these were very cool organisms to watch fly around the tank, and I was lucky enough to snap a photo as one swam by the carpenter's ruler.  All members are flattened predatory or scavenging ciliates (Patterson, p. 133).  The next species, Urocentrum, behaves like a spinning top (Patterson, p. 167).  This species frequently feeds on suspended bacteria as the cell spins around.  It was not a very hard species to obtain a picture of because it moved very slowly.

Figure 2. Urocentrum spinning through the aquarium.

Figure 3. Stenosomum in the grass.

In Figure 3, a Stenostomum tenuicuada, predatory flatworm, slowly moved around my aquarium (Pennak, p. 144). Finally, my most famous species was the Euplotes (Patterson, p. 124).  These guys were all over the place; they seemed to multiply throughout the weeks.  I noticed in these last two weeks that the euplotes were heavily at the bottom of the micro-aquarium near the soil.  They were scurrying throughout the entire slide though.  I'm sure they served as a great abundance of food for all the predators in my water as I witnessed a water bear consume one last observation.

Figure 4. The most common organism in my observations, the Euplotes.

Overall, this experiment served as great insight into the microbiology of fresh water sources around Eastern Tennessee. I'm very satisfied I chose a natural river outside of the Knoxville area because I don't think I would have been able to observe these predatory organisms.