I collected some moss from the base of a tree in my front yard, placed in a glass petri dish, and added some spring water I purchased at the grocery store. This dish has been sitting for quite a long time on a shelf by a south-facing window, and I examine it periodically to see what is in there. There are a large number of small testate amoebae like
Trinema, some rotifers and a few ciliates. I recently saw a number of
Thecamoeba terricola in the dish. Here are some pictures of this amoeba. These amoeba move very slowly and have many folds or wrinkles, as seen in the photos. The nucleus can be seen in the second photo, and a contractile vacuole can be seen in the third photo. For more information, see:
https://arcella.nl/thecamoeba-terricola/
Photos were taken with flash using a Canon 1300D camera on a Zeiss Photomicroscope III. Objective was a 40x plan achromat, with the optovar set at 1.25x, DIC.
- Thecamoeba_terricola-1_1.jpg (45.8 KiB) Viewed 537 times
- Thecamoeba_terricola-2-1_1.jpg (49.1 KiB) Viewed 537 times
- Thecamoeba_terricola-3-1_1.jpg (51.65 KiB) Viewed 537 times