MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I captured this little guy zooming around my slide and finally decided to take an image and measure it. Turns out he comes in as a super lightweight at 5.6 um. None of my searches show any ciliate on the planet being smaller than 10 um. I agree the image is practically useless but is the best I've been able to get. You can definitely see the cilia whirling around as it scoots through the water.

Cilia are a widespread cellular mechanism for both locomotion and locomoting substances. There are ciliated reproductive bodies or lifecycle stages that mimic a ciliated organism in form. Flagellated too, some quite small. In the previous query for instance, I mentioned a blastocyte or more likely a blastodisc because there are species that temporarily utilize cilia on their primitive reproductive bodies as an effective mechanism for translocating the embryo. Some fish and I think some invertebrates too.
This little one, I don't have any idea about but it could be a reproductive body.

Thanks, that makes sense.