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| According to Patterson in his book Vorticella Free-Living Fresh Water Protozoa, this is a Vorticella from the phylum Ciliophora. This protista was attatched to one of the plants, and it was not only a single one of these, but they were in a bundle. They randomly, but quickly, closed. And then once they closed, they slowly opened back up and stood straight up. |
We had some trouble deciding what this was because the protista was brown, but in the end we figured it was the top part of a Seed Shrimp. It is also know to be part of the subclass, Ostracoda. They mostly feed on algae, and their life cycle has not been verified. All that is know is that the female seed shrimp produces eggs that are released and there has been some disagreement with what happens next. Some biologists believe that the sperm are too long to fertilize the egg, therefore seed shrimps must reproduce through parthenogenesis. Parthenogeneis is a type of asexual reproduction that can produce a fertilized egg. |
This week my aquarium was filled with many water fleas, and they tended to move rapidly around the aquarium compared to the last stationary water flea that I saw last week. Everytime I moved the microscope around, there was a water flea. There were also some rotifers, but not as many as the first week. I actually did see an increase in Actinosphaerium Sarconids. They were stationary like last week, and protistas were not likely to get close to it, if they did touch it, they would quickly back away. Every week I saw more and more protistas near the plants. Maybe they found it easier to get oxygen near the plant or the fact that there was more food around the plants, such as the algae, could be the explanantion to the multiple gathering of protistas around the plants. Overall, I saw an increase in moving protistas.
Clifford H F. 2010 [cited 2010 Nov 15].Ostrocada (Seed Shrimp). [Internet]. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Alberta Conservation Association. Available from: http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/Projects/Aquatic_Invertebrates/index.php?Page=31.
Patterson D. 2003. Vorticella free-living freshwater protozoa a color guide. Washinton DC: Manson Publishing. 223 p
Pennak R W. 1989. Freshwater invertebrates of the United States protozoa to mollusca. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience Publication. 656 p
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