Since I am a beginner at microscopy, identifications of the various protists should be regarded as tentative and checked against other sources. The pictures are available by clicking on the descriptions, this to minimize bandwidth for those who arrive here by accident.
Blepharisma looks like a pink paramecium. Strong light can kill them so they are usually found in shaded ponds. Another picture of the same blepharisma and here's the last picture
Cell splitting - this one is only a few minutes from separating
Coleps look like miniature grenades. They'r common so here are more
Cothurnia is not so common, I've only seen one. Here it is partially retracted into its cover
Dileptus, you can see its mouth, the white spot at the base of the neck
Lacrymaria olor (located top center) has a VERY extensible neck
Paramecium is what most people think of as protists. A closeup- usually they're hard to photograph because they move so fast but this guy was snoozing (or posing)
Stentor is one of the larger and more common protists. The blur on the lower edge is the cilia used to produce the feeding current; bits of food are visible inside the animal. Here he has turned toward the camera and is smiling. Sometimes a stentor will pull up roots and travel.
A stentor colony - the lighting here gives it an ethereal quality (actually, I need a better light for my stereozoom but it is expensive so I use one I built from a car headlight bulb).
Stylonchia - not a great picture...
Unknown but a good picture so it should be possible to track down an ID
Urocentrum turbo, they spin rapidly on their axis and can move very fast, probably where the turbo came from? These are very common
Vorticella colony, individuals can retract rapidly by coiling their tether. These are fairly common and sometimes occur in a very large group as seen here with the stereozoom.
This page was by John Moran, resident Balplan Mechanic and XHTML tweaker.
