Biotic components under a light and disecting microscope

On the 2013/02/21 our observations under the light microscope where dismal. We never found dead or living organisms from the water in our Aqua zone. Warwick and I were fascinated when we looked through the disecting microscope at the soil from the decomp zone, where we found fungal spores germinating and growing on the soil.

This was a shot of the fungal spores taken by the our biology teacher:

This is a cell shot of our water from our aqua zone:

                                                                  A light microscope:

A disecting microscope

Who did what?

Josh - looked under the light micrscope
Took pitures of observations see under microscopes

Warwick - looked under the disecting microscope
Took pitures of observations see under microscopes

Nic - edited blog and posts
uploaded pictures to blog


EXTRA INFORMATION:

Fungal spores - www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/ppfungsp.htmlShare

Definition - Unicellular or multicellular, reproductive or distributional cells developing into a number of different phases of the complex life cycles of the fungi. Fungal spores can be readily classified by the Saccardian system, which relies on the number, shape, and placement of spore cells to classify the fungi imperfecti. Most fungal spores in pollen preparations probably are phaeospores (dark spores) of the fungi imperfecti, rather than ascospores, basidiospores, or spores of the lower fungi. However, repeating (asexual) spores of the basidiomycetes are very common in some sites.

This is a photo from the internet that looks similar to the fungal spores that were in our decomp zone

The worm-like animal that we found in our aqua zone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism

The worm like creature is a multicellular organism. Multicellular organisms are organisms that consist of more than one cell, in contrast to single - elled organisms. To form a multicellular organism, these cells need to identify and attach to the other cells.

Only a dozen or so unicellular species have cells that can be seen individually with the naked eye. The rest of the nearly two million visible species are multicellular. In particular all species of animals, land plants. and filamentous fungi are multicellular, as are many algae. Some organisms are partially uni- and multicellular, like Dictyostelium.

The worm like animal is similar to the one we found in our eco - column, and observed under the light microscope.