A couple of ciliates

[tlansing]

I am sharing a couple of pictures of ciliates that I took and really liked. The first is the suctorian Metacineta and it is unique in that the cell is enclosed in a lorica and it has very long tentacles that it uses to capture its prey (you can see a couple of the shorted ones). I was very happy to get the lorica, cell body, some tentacles, and attachment stalk all in the same plane of the photo.

Metacineta.jpg (64.3 KiB) Viewed 1288 times

The second photo is Halteria. This one was cool because this ciliate moves by jumping very quickly. However, this one just sat there and I was able to get some good photos of it. You can see the membranelles around the top of the cell and the bristles that it uses to make its jumps. I'm not sure if any of the bodies in the Halteria cell are the nucleus or not.

Halteria.jpg (73.93 KiB) Viewed 1288 times

[ScienceMatters]

Nice! That Metacineta especially is a great capture.

[DonSchaeffer]

These are wonderful shots!

[tlansing]

Thanks to both!