Observation 5

This week I had a massive increase in the number of organisms. The unfortunate thing was that almost all the organisms I saw were ones I had already identified. I saw thousands of diatoms, many Vorticella's, and several Trachysoma's. I was able to identify two new organisms though. The first was the Oscillatoria, a cyanobacteria (Tiffany 1952). It was everywhere. I could see it moving, and it kind of moved like a snake, except a lot slower. The color was a dark green. The second organism I was able to identify was a Bodo (Paatterson 1996). A Bodo is a flagellate that liked to hang around the cyanobacteria. There were thousands of them in my MicroAquarium. It moved very spastically, and was very very small. The MicroAquarium has been very interesting to look at.

Bibliography

Tiffany, Lewis. 1952. Algae of Illinois. The University of Chicago Press.

Patterson, D.J. 1996. Free Living Freshwater Protozoa: A Color Guide. Manson Publishing NY.