Bacteria Identification

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EthanBCW
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2021 11:15 pm
Location: New Zealand

Bacteria Identification

#1 Post by EthanBCW » Sat Nov 06, 2021 11:39 pm

Image
I collected some water from inside a bromeliad flower and came across this. At 400x magnification they look like little chains of beads. I feel like they're Streptococcus bacteria but I know very little about bacteria so am unsure. Can anyone help to identify which type they are?
Thanks, Ethan

Image link: https://imgur.com/579MOk2

Plasmid
Posts: 566
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2020 5:34 am
Location: North GA
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Re: Bacteria Identification

#2 Post by Plasmid » Sun Nov 07, 2021 12:20 am

Just a handful of bacteria can be identified by sight and even that requires complex stains like acid fast, endospores malachite green etc... The image you uploaded appears to show septate or multinucleated hyphae from a fungi and not a bacterial colony., but even then Im not 100% sure.
You can try to isolate the sample in question and perform a catalase test or a simple stain.
Hope this helps
Adrian
https://www.google.com/search?q=septate ... go8q40eYoM

Dubious
Posts: 426
Joined: Sun May 09, 2021 7:55 pm

Re: Bacteria Identification

#3 Post by Dubious » Sun Nov 07, 2021 4:27 am

A few of my more hypochondriacally-inclined friends have sometimes asked me about using microscopes to identify disease-causing bacteria, and I have had to explain that the eukaryotic organisms I look at, even though also single-celled, are generally much larger with more parts, and that with bacteria about the best I can usually do is see tiny blots with no features that would allow anyone to identify them. I think they probably consider me a failure as a microscopist.

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