Continuing from my previous post, I am going to try and keep an eye on the succession of life in my lichen cultures. For this, I have 6 different lichens collected from different trees put into petridishes containing RO water. Below, I categorize all life I could see after 1 week.

Here are results from three of the plates. Dont miss out the third one. It is full of exciting life that I havent seen before.

Plate-number	Observation date	Species observed
April-22-Plate1	April-29-2017	Long-ciliate, Colpoda, liitle Ciliate
April-22-Plate2	April-29-2017	Nematode, Large Bdelloid Rotifer, Tardigrade, Long ciliate, Ciliate-24621-2-LI, little ciliate
April-22-Plate3	April-29-2017	Nematode, Bdelloid Rotifer, Tardigrade, Amoeba, flagellate, Ciliate-24621-2-LI, flagellate, Ciliate with a terminal contractile vacuole, Colpoda
April-21-Plate1	April-29-2017	Nematode, Bdelloid Rotifer, Long ciliate, Stylonychia-like ciliate
April-21-Plate2	April-29-2017	Bdelloid Rotifer, Colpoda, Long ciliate
April-21-Plate3	April-29-2017	Nematode, Rotifer, Colpoda

1. April-22-Plate 1, Colpoda is the most common ciliate I have seen in over 20 lichen suspension cultures ( see previous observation, this is a different species). It definitely is significantly associated with lichens. Its also very easy to grow. You can culture it in hay infusion. I have done it several times now.

2. April 22-Plate 2. This ciliate (Ciliate-24621-2-LI) is definitely a hypotrich ciliate (reminds me of Ciliate-21501-2-LI). I suspect it is related to Stylonychia . Would you be able to help identify it?.

3.  April22-Plate 3. It is amazing how much life is there in this plate…. I thought I’d put it in this post, but I’ll leave it in suspense until the next post 🙂 — To be continued.

This post is open to read and review on The Winnower.