Foraminifera Pix

[KurtM]

Some years back while puttering around on Galveston Island looking for interesting things, and Galveston always turns up interesting things, I picked up a sample of beach sand to see what it might look like in a microscope under crossed polarizers back home. Well, it was enchanting, the next best thing to crystal slides. As I continued "sand surfing", imagine my surprise to find tiny seashells mixed in, itty bitty seashells the size of sand grains! I had discovered the world of foraminifera.

"Foraminifera (Latin meaning hole bearers, informally called "forams")", to quote Wikipedia, "are members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm that among other things is used for catching food, and commonly by an external shell or "test"".

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera

The following pics are through the 4x/.12 plan achro lens with top lighting, of an arranged slide prepared by Michel Haak of the Netherlands. All are 3 to 6 image stacks. The backgrounds are basically printed paper. The ones I found in Galveston sand look very similar to that in image 4. I post this with Fan in mind, who is getting me fired up to collect some more, and see about making my own foram slides.

[zzffnn]

Very nice, Kurt!
As I told you, I found 3 forams from my latest water rocking and water strew slide (made from Galveston East Beach sand). All 3 look similar to photo #4, just like yours.

[rnabholz]

Those are cool, I have never seen one. Nice photos too.

Are they glued to the card?

Gonna have to start paying more attention to sand.....

[KurtM]

I thought you might be interested in seeing what foram slides look like. They're quite different from what we're generally used to, being dry mounts on opaque backgrounds. Since forams tend to be quite large, about the size of sand grains, they can be a challenge to mount conventionally, don't respond well to transmitted light, and are best observed under stereo microscopes anyway to benefit from the 3D stereo view.

I should have taken a more oblique angle for the photo to show how tall those rings are. I measured 'em to be a little over 2 mm in height. I often wonder how Michel manages it.

[rabitt]

Thank you Kurt for and excellent post & photos.

Rich B

[Mintaka]

Amazingly, the shape of tests of these little guys remind strongly of that of normal sized sea shells as made by molluscs, a wholly unrelated phylum of animals! Nature seems to rediscover the same patterns repeatedly.

[c-krebs]

These really are fascinating little creatures. Thanks for showing these. I've only found 1 or 2 live ones in my plankton net over the years.

[billben74]

Really interesting slides. Nice to see the mount to.

[billbillt]

Hi All,

Here is a link to a .pdf of instructions for making the special mounts for these interesting creatures!...

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art ... Slides.pdf

BillT

[gekko]

Very beautiful work, and thanks for providing the interesting background information.