During my 8 mile run this morning, I passed the School yard track and spotted a low area with standing stagnant water from all the rain we had in October. Since I carry a specimen vial with me in my running pack (dont we all?) I brought back a teaspoon of water to examine under the microscope back home. As bad as the water looked, there was little lively activity in it. Only a few swimming protozoans, a few isolated algae strands, and some clusters of some sort of cyanobacteria. Closer examination of this apparently meager specimen showed some very interesting things to see!

Please click the thumbnails below for the full size view.

600x views:

These clumps of transparent cells appear to be some form of cyanobacteria. The bottom of the basin was covered with this material which appeared brownish to the eye. Here at 600x the separate cells can be seen. Mixed in were spores, some round ball like algae, a few swimming protozoans, and some other very strange things.

Seen here is one of the algae spheres. It is in the very center and stuck to the cellular mats. I could see structure inside, so a closer view was warranted!

A solitary strand of algae. You can see some remarkable things here. The cell walls partitioning the strand are clear, and inside each cell some amazing things were going on. A series of green patches in each cell for the photosynthesis part, and moving dark colored spheres were bouncing around inside as I watched. I had never seen anything like this before.

1500x views:

Now lets jump to the 100x oil immersion objective for the remaining shots for a combined magnification of 1600x. The close ups revealed so much more details! This is the solitary algae strand. The green patches are now clear, and look inside each cell. See the small black spheres? They were moving around rapidly inside. I think this was due to Brownian motion rather than swimming but it looked amazing.

Movie 1

Here is a You tube movie I made for 16 seconds of the action in the above shot. Watch what is going on inside an algae cell.

One of the round algae spheres. The internal detail was unexpected. Here at 1600x you can see the organells inside and the sharp cell wall. On the left is some sort of bacterium and to the upper right more bacteria in a cluster.

Another area of the cyanobacteria mat, showing several bacteria mixed in.

Now this one was very peculiar! This apparent algae strand was SWIMMING along in a sinuous line between pieces of mat. Individual cells are linked in this worm like algae. I have no idea what it is.