doomed rotifer

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Wim van Egmond
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doomed rotifer

Post by Wim van Egmond »

I was planning to post this image and I noticed Ron posted his interesting image of Spirogyra with a fungi. This is a rotifer that was still active but totally filled with fungi. I think the egg is also full of it. Quite terrifying.

Image

You are right Ron, it is nice to post beautiful images but it is even more interesting to write about about all kinds of biological aspects of the subjects we observe!

Wim

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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

An interesting and thought provoking image Wim. Makes one wonder if a similar fungi could infect and take over the human body as well. Excellent photogrpah by the way, good lighting and detail in this. As I said and interesting post, thank you. :D
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nephiliim
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Post by nephiliim »

Nice shot Wim, maybe if we could identify the fungus somehow, we could see if it can be lethal or maybe 'just' pathogenic to humans.


Maybe we could set up some kind of determination table with comparison pictures. :?:
Sometimes smaller is better!
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piotr
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Post by piotr »

Despite of the horrific scene this picture is very beautiful! I have never seen such poor rotifer.
Piotr

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micron
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Post by micron »

Nice shot Vim! Hard to believe the rotifer carried on with such an extensive fungal “infection”. I not seen this before, and a search of library failed to turn up a single reference to such a circumstance. One book did comment that investigations of fungal life cycles and ecology are an ideal area for the “amateur” microscopist as few institutions are active in this field.

Wim van Egmond
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Post by Wim van Egmond »

Thanks for the comments!

I guess they leave the more difficult subjects for the amateurs! :D Interesting discussion about these fungi. In the sample where this rotifer came from there were also other species of rotifer suffering from the same fungi.

Wim

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Dembowski
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Post by Dembowski »

Thanks for the great shot Wim. As a relative newcomer to microscopy, with a soft spot for fungi, I find this particularly fascinating.
Bill Dembowski
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psneeley
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Post by psneeley »

In Dusenbery's "life at Small Scale: The Behavior of Microbes' on page 57 in the section on shooting projectiles it notes with picture:

"The parasitic fungus Haptoglossa mirabilis infects its rotifer host by means of a gunlike injection cell only 8um long. A swimming rotifer creates currents that trigger the cell to shoot a tube through the animal's cuticle and then pump a spore through the hypodermic-needle - like device into the rotifer"

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Frez
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Post by Frez »

Hi Wim

What technique is this? BF, Phase? It's really nice. There's a lot to see. THE FUNGUS AMONG US!

Well done!
Frez

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twebster
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Post by twebster »

WOW, Wim :shock: :!:

And you say the rotifer was still functioning somewhat? Organisms at all levels hold on to life dearly, don't they? This is just a terrific image of something I've never seen before. This is one of the things that's great about this group. We all get to see some terrific images and learn something new nearly every post. Thanks for joining on, my friend. :D

Best regards as always, :D
Tom Webster
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Think about this...maybe Murphy is an optimist!!!

Wim van Egmond
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Post by Wim van Egmond »

Thanks for all the good info about the fungus! It was done with DIC, sort of. :D

Indeed Tom. All this feedback makes microscopy much easier and much more fun!.

Wim

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