May 19
![Tardigrades [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tardigrade-300x157.jpg)
Tardigrades make me squee. These little relatives of the arthropods and velvet-worms are found in the water around mosses, and they are quite easy to find if you have a cheap microscope and a little patience. Like spiders, they have eight legs, but unlike the legs of a spider, they’re plump and stumpy, and end in the little ‘fingers’ …
Jan 06
![Euchlanis rotifer [CC-BY-SA-3.0]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Euchlanis_sp.-300x276.jpg)
Most years the pond-water microscopy practical throws up an exciting ciliate (or two, or three), but this year, the only ones we saw were duplicates, or too bloody fast to photograph. Ho hum. So this year you’ll have to make do with an imposter. It’s still got cilia, but it is not a ciliate, and although it’s no bigger …
Aug 17
![Bucephalus minimus [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Bucephalus_minimus-260x300.jpg)
This is another of the things we have found down a microscope in one of our undergraduate practicals, but for once it’s not a ciliate. This is the larva of a parasitic fluke called Bucephalus, which is the Greek for ‘bull headed’. It’s appropriate for this fluke not because it looks like Alexander the Great’s horse, but because …
Dec 16
![Stentor sp. [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Stentor_sp.-244x300.jpg)
We had the annual “looking at muck down a microscope” practical last week. As usual, the best thing we saw was a ciliate in some pond water, in this case a little trumpet animalcule: Previous winners: Vorticella and Lacrymaria. The Ciliata really are the phylum that keeps on giving.
Oct 16
![Lacrymaria olor [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Lacrymaria_olor_montage-300x100.jpg)
Last year, the most marvellous thing we saw in the pond-water microscopy practical was a ciliate, and this year the prize goes to that same clade. Ciliates don’t disappoint. This is Lacrymaria olor, the “teardrop of the swan”. It’s a predator, like the Vorticella from last year, but rather than sitting rooted to the spot, Lacrymaria is …
Oct 17
![Vorticella micrograph [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/vorticella_micrograph-282x300.jpg)
It’s nice to find out that – old and jaded as I am – biology can still delight me. Earlier this week, I covered a first-year practical teaching microscopy skills to first-years, through the medium of pond water. As well as the usual desmids, rotifers, Daphnia and nematodes, one lucky student found a little clump …