Rotifers

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TomF
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Well Rotifers are not really part of the soil food web but they do show up. They are more of an aquatic critter so if you see them in soil, you may have waterlogged anaerobic conditions, which is not ideal. Now I found this fellow in a sample of water I drained from some wicking beds before the winter freeze set in. While I was draining the water, I thought, "There should be some microbes in here and likely, anaerobic ones." I had never seen a rotifer before and at first I did not know what to make of these critters inch worming along the slide with little suckers and tubes sticking out here and there and some cilia spinning out front testing the waters but not the tell tale, full dual rotating cilia corona seen on "Journey to the Microcosmos" channel on YouTube. After exploring a couple of drops in the microscope I finally saw one actually fully feeding like that and then knew what I was looking at.

I am always impressed with what you find in a drop of water from a soil or compost sample and continue to look everywhere for the critters to learn more about who, when, where and although Rotifers are not your typical soil multicellular critter, they are really cool to see. (bacteria and fungi are kind of boring) The first video is one looping around a big, fat bacterial feeding nematode at 100x and the second is a Rotifer at 400x in full corona, cilia action feeding mode with his esophagus just pumping away and so far, my favourite microscopy video.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v-OEPz ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HW6G4L ... sp=sharing
Danoost
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fascinating! thanks for sharing.
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