Week 3: 10/27/10

In today's observations, the organisms that were moving around are much smaller and slower than those that I observed during the first week. Now instead of the light brown color all of the organisms look completely transparent. There are once again the same amount of organisms on both the fern and the moss. This week there is not as much dirt on the bottom layer of the microaquarium.

The organisms I observed today:
Rotifers: there was a vast abundance of these, possibly from the food pellets that were introduced into the system this week.
Seed shrimp: I found around five of these organisms, and they were almost always on the bottom of the microaquarium.
Nematodes: these were seen throughout the microaquarium. The smaller ones were said to be younger than the long and thick ones. I saw one inside a plant bladder, which injests nematodes and dissolves them to use in the plant. (Shown below)

Aspodisca- this organism resembled the rotfers in its abundance. However appearance wise, the Aspodisca was rounder and smaller than the rotifer. It is known to have a clear mouth and I observed it moving quickly in random circular motions.

Sources for organisms:
-Dr. McFarland (rotifer, seed shrimp, nematode)
-D.J. Patterson. Free Living Freshwater Protozoa: A Colour Guide. ASM Press, Washington D.C. 2003.

Week 1

In this lab we set up a microaquarium in order to study it for the next few weeks. We began by color coding the microaquarium in order to tell ours apart from everyone else's. Using a pipette, we extracted water from the container with water from the Fountain City Duck Pond (Botany 111, 2010). We first extracted water from the bottom of the bowl and pipetted it into the bottom 1/3rd portion of the microaquarium, then from the middle part of the bowl of water into the next 1/3rd of the microaquarium, and finally water from the top layer of the water source into the top 1/3rd of the microaquarium. We placed the microaquarium was placed in its stand and decorated with plants and mosses.

Observations: When viewed under the 10x lens of the microscope, we saw translucent brown bugs crawling around the bottom of the microaquarium, usually on the plants. Not much other activity was noted at this time.

Water source information:
Fountain City Duck Pond. West of Broadway at Cedar Lane. Knox Co. Knoxville TN Full sun exposure. Spring Feed Pond N36 02.087 W83 55.967 963 ft 10/10/2010


Works cited:
http://botany1112010.blogspot.com/