I had some sea water collection from 3 months ago sitting on my balcony; evaporating under the sun. Everything that was initially growing in the same died; since the water salinity reached astronomical values (probably 10 times higher than sea water; since most of the water has evaporated at this time).

But again, I was just curious and took a drop form this bucket to see what might have survived. And to my shocking surprise, I saw this tiny nematode crawling around gulping up all kinds of bacteria and maybe ciliates. I did see a lot of ciliates; that I will post in the next post.

Here, is a video of one of them. Look how it uses its nose to make decisions about where to go; and returns back by retraction.

I also used an unusual effect of a water droplet used as a secondary lens; to further magnify the nematode. This gives rise to an interesting visual effect – take a look.

Now, I will let the water evaporate further and directly measure the salinity of the water. I am very curious to learn more about how orhanisms can suddenly (in the same generation) adapt to survive in very high salinity environment. See my previous post of mosquitoes surviving high salinity environments.

Until next time..

Cheers

Manu