When looking through the microscope at a bell animalcule it's often hard to recognize how these small stalked ciliates are built. Making a photographic image that gives a lifelike view of the organism is even more difficult. Because of the small depth of field of the microscope you can only see a...
Growth of a Starfish
mites are familiar to everyone who ever observed pond water. The larger species are clearly visible as fast swimming sometimes deep red spider like creatures. Determination of to what genus a water mite belongs is not very hard but when you want to determine the species it becomes much more...
examining some marine water under a stereo microscope I suddenly saw something I had always been intrigued by. It was a larvacean called Oikopleura. Larvaceans are primitive chordates related to tunicates. They look like tunicate larvae but retain this larval shape when they become adult....
microscopic algae, micro organisms
Dinocampus coccinellae, parasitoid wasp
the very thought of them is enough to start off the itching and scratching!! Several of us put our heads together to compile this article William Ells supplied the idea and some of the resources; Anne Bruce supplied the words; Maurice...
sessile rotifer, I discovered the creature in a pond near my home in Rotterdam. It stood on a strand of green algae full of diatoms and Suctoria. I photographed it in phase contrast since that seemed the easiest way to show both the...
An introduction to rotifers
nature, the fungi. Fungi are the major recyclers in nature. Most fungi are microscopic, they exists as filaments in soil or decaying wood. Mushrooms are fungi that reproduce via macroscopic fruiting bodies, forming spores. Especially in a wet autumn, the colourful world of the mushrooms is a...