MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Very commonly found: Spirostomum teres. Also present between detritus in a dewatering channel.

Beautiful images...sort of like the vintage zeppelin airships...I even get a sense of the smooth gliding motion! 1) How did you get so much of these elongated protozoans in near to same plane of focus...terrific images. Are these a collection of 'stiched images' assembled into these final images?

2) Are you sure it's : 40X magnification you depict? Is it that these were very small specimens? At ...10X occular with 4X objective...is this the 40X magnification you mean for these wonderful images?

3) Did these specimens periodically manifest a full body abrupt longitudinal contraction?

I love the focus of some much overall body of these protozoans you are able to image. Thanks for this shared work, Imperator rex. charlie guevara

Nice photo!

Thank you Charlie and WjhyMe, glad that you like it.

No stitching or other specific technique used, simply made many fotos and with a bit luck I got few good shots when they moved straight forward. The 40x just indicates the objective I have used, I guess this is a bit missleading. So I may better change labeling to 40x/0.75 to indicate better its related to the objective.
Yes they often contract, but seems it is not too easy to capture these on fotos.
Actually when checking FOISSNER I think it is not Sp. teres, maybe it is Sp minus. The shape of the macronucleus for Sp. teres is eliptical and only a single one. On some of my fotos I can see different shape and also more of them are visible.

You may also enjoy the fotos provided in below articles - one of the best I have seen:

https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/index. ... ic=32517.0

https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/index. ... ic=27226.0

Very nice DIC images of these ciliates.
RB