I've always been fascinated by things which
are beyond my normal vision. This manifests
itself in my interest in close-up (macro-)
photography and also in astronomy and microscopy.
When I was at school, I was given a small
'toy' microscope by my parents. It was fun
to discover plants and animals swimming around
in a single drop of pond water completely
unseen to the unaided eye. However, one day
I collected some water from a pond that was
halfway up a wooded hill, a good walk from
my home. I looked at the water in my jam jar
with a little hand lens and noticed a few
small green creatures that appeared to be
like tiny anemones or coral polyps.
When I
put one of these under my microscope. I was
amazed! This "thing" moved and waved
tentacles around in the water. Although green,
it was a living animal, catching smaller "things"
in those tentacles. My little microscope was
not capable of showing these Hydra very clearly
or the smaller plants and animals they fed
upon, but with that discovery I was hooked.
Unfortunately, there was a huge gulf between
my little scope and a laboratory level biological
microscope both in terms of performance and
price! So, I never really got the opportunity
to see these tiny creatures at their best,
until now.........
Recently I have had the opportunity of using
a microscope capable of providing much better
views of this microscopic world and once more
I have the chance to satisfy my insatiable
curiosity. The down side is that I am rapidly
collecting a lot of jars of dirty water! Of
course one of the first ponds to look at has
been the balancing pond in our nature reserve.
I have taken just one sample so far. Material
was collected using a simple pipette from
around the submerged parts of reeds and some
filamentous algae. I don't know if it means
that the pond is in a healthy condition, but
the sample I took is teeming with life. I'm
struggling to identify all the microscopic
fauna and flora in it. So far I've identified
over 20 species. I'm hoping that some of these
may be indicators of water quality and thus
be useful for future monitoring.
I was delighted to find some of the species
I was hoping to see. I have seen many creatures
in just this small sample, far too many to
describe them all here. I have included just
a few images for illustration that I have
taken through the microscope using a digital
camera.
|
Hydra
|
The
first surprise was Hydra. Long green tentacles
as I remembered but now with much more detail.
Their bodies only up to 10mm long but under
the microscope I could witness their feeding
and observe the structure of their cells. |
|
Next was Daphnia, some might think of them as "water
flees". These creatures are even smaller
than hydra (usually no larger than about 0.5mm
diameter), yet under increasing magnification
I could watch the beating heart of one. I
felt especially privileged to witness the
birth of 2 live daphnia and even caught the
whole event on digital video. |
Daphnia
(Water Flea)
|
| Then, the third animal from my wish list came
into view: the classic single-celled protozoan,
an Amoeba. Contrary to popular belief, this
organism is far from simple. Under a good
quality microscope, they exhibit a great complexity
in both structure and movement and are fascinating
to watch as they slowly ‘crawl’
about devouring any food they come across. |
Amoeba
|
Spirogyra
|
A plant (alga) I’ve always
wanted to see is the ‘text book’
example from my school biology - Spirogyra.
It consists of very fine green filaments (no
more than 0.2mm wide) as seen by the naked eye,
however only when viewed under the microscope
can it’s unique structure be truly appreciated.
Each cell contains bright green cytoplasm wound
into a spiral along its length (as shown in
the picture). Under high magnification this
can even be seen to move - the very life of
the cell! |
| The
cyclops (so called because it has one eye
spot) is about 2mm long and carrying two egg
sacks.
|
Cyclops
|
| The diatom is the smallest creature here,
being only about 0.1mm long. |
Diatom
|
|
I appreciate that not everyone shares my
enthusiasm over small drops of pond water!
However, it can be amazing what you can find
if you take the time to look. If any of you
reading this article has some knowledge or
expertise in this field then I would love
to hear from you.
- by Ian Betts |
