A fine Summer day here in Payson today, I headed out to the River up the road to see what new life was beginning in the creek. Heavy layers of algae had started to form on slow spots, and I could only see tiny minnows skirting about the bottom. Samples of the algae were taken and brought back to the lab for study under the microscope. A surprise was in store! While the algae was of a type I had never seen under the scope before, dozens of tiny transparent ostrcods were skittering about.

The way they move is really interesting. They are a bivalved crustacean, with two compound eyes, antenna and mouth parts and legs that stick out of the slot between valves. When the move, they race up and down the individual algae strands by crawling at high speed with thier tiny legs that protrude out the slot. Then they jump off into the open water and zoom around until they hit another strand. Then going up and down again up the strands looking for prey.

To photograph these fast moving animals, I put two in a drop of water on a microscope slide and carfuly put a cover slip over them without crushing them. They were alive and well, and held stationary for my shots. After the shots were taken, they were returned to thier aqueous enviornment.

CLICK ALL THUMBNAILS FOR THE LARGER VIEW

Lets start with a shot of location. Im standing on the bank of the river, and you can see the green color in the water.

At 60x, the algal strands show some fine internal details. They were in long hair like masses.

Zooming in at 150x we can now see the very organized nature of the internal structures.

600x shows internal diagonal crosslinking of the internal structures and cell walls as partitions between cells.

At 1500x you can see the small round chloroplasts and mitochondrion swimming round the insides. Movies of this show plenty of movement iniside each cell as the organells move about. This is a 100x objective and oil immersion.

At 60x, here is one ostracod. You can see its internal organs and two compound eyes.

A second specimen - alive and held still by the cover slip.

At 150x it starts to get interesting! Both valves are seen and on the right is the opening or slot for the legs to protrude.

600x - The internal organs seen clearly here, and the compound eyes are like bunches of grapes. The legs are tucked inside at this point.