Juice of the Sphagnum

As mentioned in yesterday's post, I grabbed a small sample of Sphagnum with the intention of checking it beneath a microscope for signs of life. A couple of years back, I was quite 'into' microscopic freshwater algae and Sphagnum pools are always full of them. I fancied refreshing my memory and hoped there would be something interesting to view. 

There certainly was...

These are Euastrum cuneatum - a lifer!

Netrium digitus - very common in this sample with dozens seen

Micrasterias truncata - oddly, the only one of the genus I could find

All of the above are species of desmid, you'll notice that they comprise two mirror-image halves. The largest species are just about visible through a 10x handlens as tiny green flecks suspended in water. These images were taken through my compound microscope, the stereo microscope lacks sufficient magnification. Desmids are my favourite of the microscopic algae, they are pleasing on the eye and some are actually quite easy to identify to species. Others less so...

Probably a Cosmarium. Lots and lots of these, all exceedingly similar to each other.

I fully appreciate that the above are less than wonderful images, I simply hold my camera to the small eyepiece of my compound microscope and zoom in full whack. It's a relatively cheap microscope and optically it leaves rather a lot to be desired. But it's fine for a bumbling amateur like myself. I do need to upgrade at some point; a stereo model with superior lenses and a measuring graticule would allow me to appreciate and identify these things far better than I currently can. 

So that's a small selection of the desmids that I found in just two drops of water from a squeezed strand of Sphagnum. Staying with the same two drops, I noted lots of rotifers wheeling their way through the water column (this being approximately half a millimetre in depth and squished beneath a microscope coverslip...) plus a few weird oval shapes that look a bit like a medieval drinking flask. Like this, in fact

I've seen these before but never sussed what they were. Some look like tiny seeds with reticulated patterns across the surface, others have elongated 'necks', the one above has the rear half bordered by a wide rim which narrows as it nears the open end. I tend to look at these curiously before passing them by, none the wiser as to what they are. 

Then I saw this one and the penny has finally dropped!

Clue: look at the open end....

There is a protuberance oozing its way from the flask, I watched it with a grin on my face - this is an amoeba!!! I'm not sure why, but I find that wildly exciting. If you've ever seen the film The Blob, you'll know what an amoeba is. Admittedly, in real life they don't generally attack townships and eat all the residents, but on a microscopic scale they are awesome beasts and I've wanted to see one since childhood. Here's a short video clip of it doing its thing - very slowly! 

Edit: This is Planocarina carinata, sweet! 

It turns out that these flask-dwelling amoebae are properly known as testate amoebae. They are single-celled animals that dwell within a 'test', which presumably offers them shelter and protection. The amorphous blobby bits waving out the end of this test are the pseudopodia, which are cytoplasm-filled appendages used for locomotion and for grabbing and digesting food. Just writing that fills me with awe, these things are amazing! I have no idea how an animal with just one cell can manage to form and control these pseudopodia, or create the test, but I find it all very exciting! 

As if that wasn't fantastic enough in itself, a pale pink whirring thing suddenly wheeled and spun across my field of view. The heck was that..? A frantic bit of scanning around and I found it again. Extremely poor image now follows

Think of a transparent 2D shark swimming right to left across the screen. With a beard of rapidly beating hairs for propulsion! No, not a shark - a knifefish! Yeah, I knew it reminded me of something. Here's a pic of a knifefish for you

Pretend that the eye is missing and that the tail is the front end instead of the head - and that the long fin on the underside is a row of rapidly beating hairs - and that it is transparent with a pink tint. Oh, and that it is about 100th of a millimetre long. THAT is what the thing is in the image! It's a ciliate named Blepharisma and there are only four species known to occur in Sphagnum. I think I've ruled out one of them, but sadly I can't confidently progress further than genus level. Here's a short clip of it wheeling around in a square millimetre or so of Sphagnum Juice - not easy to keep track of

 

I finally finished watching Blepharisma charging around like a mad thing and took one final sedate scan around my two drops of water. Then I found this, for which I have no explanation or understanding

What the actual feck is that then? I watched it for ages, it never slowed down, it never relented chasing its tail, it never moved from within the bubble. I actually have absolutely no idea what I have captured here. I'm quite into weird stuff like sub-atomics, worlds within worlds, hidden dimensions etc. The whole time I was watching this...thing...I was wondering if I was watching battling demons, fission or the creation of a new world. What would happen if it broke free from its bondage? Would our world end, would some terrible magic be unleashed? What the hell was it? I am still none the wiser, it seems to me that nothing animate would move endlessly like that, so it's some sort of a chemical reaction? Something trapped by surface tension in...an oil bubble? Answers below please! 

I reckon my Sphagnum sample is good for easily another dozen squeezes. I literally have no idea what wonders await within

I've just reviewed this post before publishing. Ha, each of my videos has music in the background. Anybody think they know all three tracks involved? I'll need the artists too for full marks :)