Observation: Friday Oct 22

Today I did my first observation of my MicroAquarium since setting it up the previous week. Unfortunately, my MicroAquarium slipped out of my hands as I was putting it on the microscope stage, and the glass cracked on the front. Dr. McFarland helped me move all the water into a replacement and I was able to continue from there, but there was not a lot of movement and the sediment was scattered throughout. Despite this, I was still able to observe some organisms. The first organism I found was a Heliozoan, a type of protozoan. It is pale green with radiating lines, which I learned are pseudopodia that are used for capturing food (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260097/heliozoan). The next organism I identified is a Fragilaria, which resembles a ruler. It is very straight and yellowish-brown. The third organism I identified was a Paramecium bursaria, which is a symbiotic protozoan. It is very large and a vivid green color, which I learned is due to a symbiosis with a single-celled algae called Chlorella (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/785659).