Short Stentor

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Wim van Egmond
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Short Stentor

Post by Wim van Egmond »

Image

I have always loved Stentors. But they are hard to photograph. This one is perhaps flattened a bit too much. But it is has a funny posture this way.

There is something I am curious about. This Stentor should be Stentor polymorphus, the green Stentor full with symbiotic algae. But this one is different from the ones I normally find in ponds. This one is found between sphagnum moss in a marsh and it is much shorter than the normal Stentor polymorpha. Polymorpha means 'many forms' but this one is almost as wide as long and it can't stretch much more than this. I have seen this before with other samples from marshes. Could it be a different species?

brightfield, 25X plan apo

Wim

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Mike
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Post by Mike »

Hello Wim,

I have enjoyed your photos for some time now, and this is, once again, a beautiful image with tremendous amount of information.

All the best,
Mike
"Nil satis nisi optimum"

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Gyrosigma
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Post by Gyrosigma »

Hy Wim,
to answer your question we need to see the number of nuclei....

But I think with this color it is realy a S.polymorphus.

I use the key written by a friend Walter Dioni in miscape at this adress : http://www.microscopy-uk.net/mag/indexm ... entor.html

best regards

Dominique (from France)

lacerta
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Post by lacerta »

Very artistically presented image--downright beautiful. You are right that they can take many forms. During a laboratory exam when I had to identy live specimens of protista, the stentor stumped the whole class. Normally distinctive and easy to identify, the specimen we looked at was not cooperative and had retracted into a tight ball. I, and others, had no idea what it was!
George

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micron
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Post by micron »

Wim another wonderful shot - you can almost reach out and touch it!

Could this may be Fabrea salina - a short, pear shaped Stentor found in salt marshes (low salinity)?

Wim van Egmond
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Post by Wim van Egmond »

Thanks for all the comments, Mike, George!
Ron, It don't think it is that species since I found it between sphagnum moss. I will have another look at the Stentors (I still have them) and see if they have a string of nucleï, Dominique. They seem to have a different shape than the St. polymorphus I usually see but perhaps this has to do with the acidic water conditions?

This was a green individual. Most of the others where almost black.

Wim

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piotr
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Post by piotr »

Absolutely amazing! It looks like an alien creature.
Piotr

Oliver Skibbe
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Post by Oliver Skibbe »

Hello, Wim!
Your photo most probably shows Stentor niger. This species can be very abundant in acidic bog ponds. Due to their strong pigmentation they look almost black under incident light.
Stentor niger rarely attaches to the substrate. The ciliates swim around and gather close to the surface of the waterbody, where they can form conspicious dark clouds.

Oliver Skibbe
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Post by Oliver Skibbe »

Sorry, I have to correct my comment. After digging around in some old notes (some years ago I dealt with ciliate taxonomy), I see that there's quite a taxonomic confusion regarding the two dark coloured Stentor species S. niger and S. amethystinus.
The one you found is now called Stentor amethystinus.

Wim van Egmond
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Post by Wim van Egmond »

Thank you very much for the identification. It is greatly appreciated! I'll see if I can also make some images of the dark ones. Not easy becasue they are not very transparent :D

Wim

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GreenLarry
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Post by GreenLarry »

Thats a very neat image, very sharp!

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