Once my camera adapter had arrived I went to collect some dirty water from a puddle. It's winter here, so it was frozen over, but even then, there was an absolute huge amount of life in there.
All following posts came from the same sample.
First off is a #Rotifer digging through some decomposing algae.
A collaborative research team lead by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently revealed that rotifers, a kind of microscopic zooplankton common in both fresh and ocean water around the world, are able to chew apart microplastics, breaking them down into even smaller, and potentially more dangerous, nanoplastics—or particles smaller than one micron. Each rotifer can create between 348,000–366,000 per day, leading to uncountable swarms of nanoparticles in our environment.
Microscopy is a hobby of mine. For the last few years I've been collecting observations of microorganisms from local water bodies. Nowadays its a handy hobby for when I teach microbiology classes.
I've collected a lot of short videos of microbial life - check out this beautiful, strange #rotifer!
#biology #nature #micro #microbiology #animal #microscope #weird
NIOO-KNAW
Simeon Schmauß
Jess Holz
Minerva Cerridwen
Benjamin Carr, Ph.D. 👨🏻💻🧬
djsolar913
Rosemary Hartman
Chrisper's Lab
Dinosarden