Tuesday 23 August 2011

Identifying Stentor on a snail's shell

Received first feedback on the draft press release for the NRW delegation – we sought approval from our various hosts. Some changes required, including a revision of the original title which had been emasculated by the suggested revision. Sighed, accepted my lot and made the changes, then sent on to Ms Luetje and Mr Juengst to keep them informed. Still have another permission/edit outstanding to be mailed to me.

The mood was enlivened by the arrival of Ms Fleming and Mr Snoswell with a pond sample containing small ramshorn snails with strange green goo at the central depression of their whorls. I had been intrigued by the photos on Ms Fleming's Facebook post, which tantalisingly lacked sufficient detail for clear identification. We soon had the stereo-microscope out and were chasing the snails in a petri dish as they threatened to zoom out of view at 6x to 20x magnification.

I attached my camcorder to the microscope and made some recordings which we then replayed on a larger television screen, with identification guides on hand. We soon established that the green matter comprised colonies of Stentor polymorphus, which absorb chlorella as symbionts. The vase shaped organisms, with their cilia rimmed apertures, were oblivious to the movement of both the snail and the petri dish.

I edited a short video with a range of clips. Mr Heker called in via Skype on another matter and was roped in to help with the audio editing via shared screen! The video was uploaded to YouTube and also embedded in a short blog article which was subsequently submitted to Micscape, an online microscopy magazine.

The rest of the afternoon was a return to continuing the manuscript review begun yesterday.
The evenings news is is full of the Libyan rebels storming Gaddaffi's compound, a key target in Tripoli. No sign of the colonel or his sons though.

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