Unknown sea water “tiny” nematode

Mar 14, 2015 • 10:57 AM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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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

Unknown sea water “tiny” nematode

Manu Prakash

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