MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

After a few seconds, the video will shift from bright field to phase contrast where you can easily see this web. Can anyone explain what it is we're looking at?

Update: Someone has suggested this is Foraminifera. Based on some videos, the net certainly looks like it. Unfortunately, the net emanated from a thick/dark piece of algae so there was no way to see any test/shell.

Fresh water sample. 40X objective.

Thanks.

Today (3 weeks after the original post) I found another similar organism in the same water sample. This one was wholly visible, but the net was much smaller and less visible than the one a few weeks ago. I'm adding this short video to this post to show a different look at what I believe is the same species. 40x oil objective phase contrast.

It looks very similar to axopodia that come off of reticulomyxa. Some of them do not have that large of a center mass, and this looks very similar to the species, reticulomyxa filosa.

I've seen webs similar to your first video, with streaming in both directions, from foraminifera.

Here is my video.

Macnmotion, thank you for posting these videos; I find them quite surprising.
Just to check; are these filmed at normal speed or is the video sped up ?

Chas wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:39 am

Macnmotion, thank you for posting these videos; I find them quite surprising.
Just to check; are these filmed at normal speed or is the video sped up ?

Thanks. These are at 1X speed.