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Mystery Bug of the Month

January-05

Cannibals from the Depths below. . . . .

OK, well they are not really from oceans below or under the sea, in reality this little critter was found in a wastewater Aeration Lagoon at a papermill. What surprised me is how the other higher life forms, especially the small free swimming ciliates, were like sharks or vultures. There could sense the worm was under stress ( he was getting smashed by the pressure from the slide) and they were waiting to attack!! The more the worm was stressed, higher volumes of free swimming ciliates showed up. It was amazing and a weird experience to watch . . . ..

We do have videos of this, but they are too large to load on a website. They are one megabyte for each second. Some of the videos were 20-30 seconds. You may contact us for copies of the videos if you are interested.

These photomicrographs were taken from a wastewater sample. Most of the objectives used were 40x or 100x and 400x. The worm was too large to photograph at 1000x.

Come take a closer look at the amazing world under the microscope!

40x	ok, here is our worm at the beginning of this photo session- 100x bright field, he is a very large worm, the small dots are free swimming ciliates and floc particles
100x	Has lots of individual segments, outer hairs or spikes, 400x
400x	400x

Here there are only 4 free swimmers near the worm	ok, the attackers arrive onsite and sense trouble
Coleps are scavengers	they start the attack
They attack from both ends, just a handful at first	More and more come


The worm wiggles away and slowly starts losing sections, yet is still alive
The free swimming ciliates start attacking on the sides also	Poor Worm





Hundreds of free swimming ciliates gathered at the worm Remember, this is all in one drop of water on a slide under the microscope !!!

1000x Bright Field

Below are the free swimming ciliates close up

They look pretty harmless, hard to imagine all that damage or that sophistication to sense trouble, and all come together in such a feeding frenzy!

You never know what you will find under the microscope. . . .

Want to see more of the Mystery Bug- videos and photos

Mystery Bug 9-04 Mystery Filament of the Month 9-04 Mystery Filament of the Month 10-04

Mystery Bug 10-04 Mystery Bug-11-04 Mystery Bug-12-04 Mystery Bug-1-05

Mystery Bug-2-05 Mystery Bug-3-05 Mystery Bug-4-05 Mystery Bug-5-05

Mystery Bug-6-05 Mystery Bug-7-05 Mystery Bug-8-05

Mystery Bug-9-05 Mystery Bug-10-05 Mystery Bug-11-05 Mystery Bug-12-05

Mystery Bug 1-06 Mystery Bug 2-06 Mystery Bug 3-06

Mystery Bug 4-06   Mystery Bug 5-06 Mystery Bug 6-06

Mystery Bug 8-06 II   Mystery Bug 9-06 II Mystery Bug 10-06

Mystery Bug 11-06    Mystery Bug 12-06

Mystery Bug 1-07 and links to all of 2007 Mystery Bugs pages

Stay tuned each month

More to come soon!

Enlargements: If you liked these pictures and want to see additional microorganisms check out the pages below.

Amoeba

Flagellates

Free Swimming Ciliates

Eating under the microscope- Dinner time!

What if you do not have a lab or microscope onsite that is capable of performing an analyses of your system?

Find out how Environmental Leverage's lab can perform an analyses of your biomass in your system and make recommendation on how to improve your system.

Wastewater Biomass Analyses

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