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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

A single-celled creature found in pond water


Description: Scanning electron micrograph of a Vaginicola, a single-celled creature found in pond water. The cell (green) secretes and lives within a protective casing called a lorica into which it can contract. The cell is attached to the bottom of the lorica and has hair-like cilia at the end, which it uses for feeding. Scanning electron micrograph 2000 Collection Wellcome Images.



Author: David Furness

Licensing: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK)
Microorganisms or microbes are microscopic organisms that can be found all around the world. They can be unicellular or cell clusters. As such, they are only visible under a microscope.

They are largely composed of the members of the Archaea and Bacteria kingdoms (both are prokaryotic cells) and unicellular Protists (belong to eukaryotes). Within the umbrella of Protist, the members can be further divided into:

• Protozoa – “animal-like”, like Paramecium and Amoeba;
• Protophyta – “plant-like”, like Diatomgreenred, and brown algae;
• Molds – “fungus-like”, like water mold and slime mold.

Typically, pond water contains a variety of microorganisms. They could be free-living single cells or microorganisms that cluster together in large numbers (colonies). Sometimes, you will find microscopic animals and plants that consist of hundreds or even thousands of cells. We will also include these multicellular organisms in this guide.

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