Microbial diversity in a paddy field water sample – Part 2

Aug 05, 2019 • 1:46 AM UTC

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Microorganisms

TCIS Outreach

We are a group of students, volunteers and staff working with TIFR Hyderabad's Science Education and Outreach program: http://www.tifrh.res.in/~outreach/

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DIATOMS, ROTIFERS and SOMEONE UNIQUE

The water drop sample from the paddy field further showed moving diatoms and rotifers.

One particular organism puzzled me. At first, from its bifurcated tail, I thought it was a rotifer. But on better focusing, I observed its cilia .

Was it a ciliate? It seemed too big for a ciliate. YouTube and Google explorations indicated that this was neither a rotifer nor a ciliate, but an organism called Chaetonotus , belonging to the Phylum Gastrotricha.
Chaetonotus was an incredibly fast microbe and I struggled over an entire day to capture its movements in my videos. At the end of the day, when I finally recorded this video, this poor Chaetonotus must have been exhausted, as its movements had become very slow. I later learnt that the average life span of a gastrotrich is only around 3-21 days.
Look out for the next post!
See Part 1 and Part 3 of this series.

Cheers for now!
Ashalatha
with Debashree, Jayashree, Chandrika