strange kind of a ciliat

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ralfwagner
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strange kind of a ciliat

Post by ralfwagner »

Hello,

I am new to this forum and I want to introduce myself with a picture of an unknown, strange kind of ciliat that I recently found in a small pond in a forest near Wuppertal, Germany:

Image

It shows zoochlorellae and e.g. in contrast to a stentor its form is not fluctuating. The behavior is more similar to that of a dinoflagellata.

For those who are not afraid of a ~ 3 MB download per movie, I have prepared two movies (DIVX-avi-format)::

movie-1: http://home.arcor.de/dr.ralf.wagner/Bilder/ciliat-1.avi

movie-2: http://home.arcor.de/dr.ralf.wagner/Bilder/ciliat-4.avi

These movies show the strange behavior of that ciliata much better than a single foto ever could.

Does anybody know what this could be? I asked the same question already in the German Mikro-forum (http://www.mikroskopie-forum.de). The result was, that it might be a degenerated stentor. But perhaps we will find out more in this forum.


Thank you in advance for your comments.

Ralf Wagner

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Ralf,

Welcome to this forum! :D It's unusual for a new poster to go for more than a few hours without being greeted. I think your subject must have everyone pretty confused!

I looked at your videos, which are nicely done and very informative. The beast seems to be completely rigid, with well defined angular structures and what I take to be possibly a smooth oral groove. There appears to be a large zone near but not at the posterior that is largely free of zoochlorellae, barely hinted in the still picture.

I don't recall ever seeing anything like this beast, but that doesn't mean much since I barely make "newbie" in protozoa.

I strongly encourage more knowledgeable members of the forum to take a look at Ralf's videos and offer up whatever insights can be gleaned.

--Rik

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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

Greetings Ralf and welcome to the community of microscopist. :D I myself cannot identify the critter and I tried to link up with your vidios but Windows would not support them for some unknown reason. I too have observed ciliates like this and often wondered myself if they were something out of the ordinary. :-k

Anyway, it is great to have you here Ralf. :D There are some others here who are quite more up to date on protozoans and may have a clue as to what you have photographed here. Lets hope so. Again, welcome to the community! :D
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Kenneth Ramos
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Reposts of my images within the galleries are welcome, as are constructive critical critiques.

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ralfwagner
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Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 12:11 pm
Location: Germany, Duesseldorf
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strange kind of a ciliat

Post by ralfwagner »

Ken,

if you have problems with the videos, you should install the "divx-video-codec". You can download the codec from this site:

http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/download/

I use this codec because it reaches a high compression rate combined with a good qualtiy.

---- Ralf ---

MoRo
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Post by MoRo »

Hi

maybe you can find your ciliat on this website

http://starcentral.mbl.edu/mv5d/portal/ ... &Itemid=50

If you do please let me know what it is.

MoRo

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ralfwagner
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Location: Germany, Duesseldorf
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Post by ralfwagner »

Hello MoRo,

thanks for that link. An interesting site! Unfortunately I couldn't find my ciliata on that site.
--- Ralf ---

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