Stylonychia bitten by a Coleps - Caught on Camera

[Chainsaw_DNA]

I think this is a case where a Stylonychia is bitten by a Coleps. Can someone please confirm?

While in the process of recording this ciliate's contractile vacuole, a Coleps all of a sudden appears out of nowhere and takes a byte. Surprisingly, instead of continuing the attack, the Coleps vanishes.

[Wes]

Pesky buggers those Coleps are! I once observed (and filmed actually) a couple of Coleps individuals sucking out the contents of what I believe was a rotifer egg.

[Javier]

Nice catch. It's amazing how Coleps found and gather around dying organism to feed on them.

[Francisco]

Very nice.

[Bruce Taylor]

These little guys can be aggressive.

The larger ciliate is not Stylonychia. It lacks the long caudal cirri and rigid cortex of that genus. It is probably in Oxytrichidae, but we don't see how somatic cirri are arranged, so can't confidently identify this critter below subclass Hypotrichia.

The little one is in Colepidae (it lacks posterior armour, so is the mother cell, or "proter," of a recent division). The genus Coleps has been split up, and identification now requires a rather close view of the calcified plates that surround the ciliate, so it is best to identify only to family level.