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I am going to the protozoan-infested waters of Texas by way of cup/bucket and microscope. The cup or bucket is the transportation device. The microscope is the tool to examine the environment much like a bird watcher uses binoculars to watch for birds. I expect to find protozoan life. I expect to find Ciliates - supposedly found nearly everywhere there is water. Ciliates are interesting study subjects because they have two nuclei (a macro- and a micro- nucleus). If the temperature of the environment is just right then there may be a chance to find an amoeba.

Research will be presented in this [brief?] paper. The information that will be included would be an initializing introduction, a description of what I did, the data collected, and concluding analysis of the data. This document will be typed. Attempts at classification will be made. Findings will be documented by crude pencil-sketched drawings with short descriptions of noticeable characteristics. This will usually include behavior (especially locomotion) and the settings for the microscope to be able to observe the creature.

Before I began my journey I watched a video depicting protistans in their natural habitat. In the microscopic ecosystem I was able to distinguish examples of protists in the video however other organisms were more difficult - perhaps I saw some archaebacteria and eubacteria. As the video continued to be played, some similarities between the organisms started to emerge. Firstly there were structural similarities where some would have similarly shaped “heads”. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, movement in the microscopic world was an emergent characteristic of the similar organisms that passed by on the screen. In other words I did not see Paramecium bursaria (which moves via cilia) moving like a Stentor (which expands and contracts). The differences that I observed include speed/behavior, food, environment, and “vibration” of the organism. In hindsight motion would be an important factor because it the scale factor is very small in comparison: the organism that moves efficiently and in to the correct location is more likely to survive. The “vibration” is possibly an emergent characteristic of twitching cilia or pseudopods quickly forming/deforming. A particular question asked me to hypothesize the way that life is maintained by these organisms. My hypothesis is that protistans maintain life by specific locomotion, cellular communication (like in colonies), and by eating smaller life (unless the specific member is photoautotrophic). The final question asked me what piqued my interest about the video. I find the micro-ecosystem and variation in the large amount of clutter (producing variation) intriguing.

The procedures were not complicated. In order to gain access to the microenvironment we had to collect these environments. We did this while over Spring Break so that we may find a good “watering hole”. It is of particular importance to find a suitable water-source or else the members of Kingdom Protista will not be found. The most immediate example would be filtered/treated water: if the water treatment plant is doing its job then there should be no organisms within the water. Since the idea is to find the organisms anyway the source has to be somewhere outside: natural water. Not just any natural water but instead something that could serve the term disgusting justice. Why disgusting? Why murky? The “murk” that is seen in pond water is commonly the waste product of life (or our own waste products - but that's a different matter). The stench that emerges in ponds is a result of organisms generating by-product. The locations with the best samples can be identified by smell, vision (“does it look green?”), and geographic location (the target was Texas water). Why green? Part of the Kingdom Protista is the eukaryotic algae. Most algal members are photosynthetic and from all previous studies the photosynthetic organisms are the ones with chlorophyll a and b - making a nice green appearance (making green deflected and yet every other color of the spectrum absorbable).

Once the water was collected it was brought back to school to sit for a few days until it was used for our “expeditions”. The process that we used to examine the life went something like this: 1) choose a bucket of water, 2) use an eyedropper to place a drop of the water on a slide, 3) cover the slide with a cover-slip, 4) observe, 5) document, 6) repeat indefinitely (until time's up). The materials that were used were simple and the best for this lab. The slides and cover slips were clean. The microscopes were used from medium to high power. The high-high power (greater than 400 times magnification) was not very helpful. Also, after a while it became clear that the water that was not clear had the best samples near the top of the water. This should have been obvious to me at first: photosynthetic organisms would tend to gather near the top because that's where the most sunlight would be reached. After figuring that out the frequency of organisms in my samples/specimens-per-sample increased.

The Stentor that I found was barely moving. It looked more like a green blob than anything else. When it did move it did so by “twisting” its large glob-iness (perhaps it was moving in a vertical direction). The amount of clutter within the cell made it difficult to figure out if there was a specific stomach or other specialized organelles. The Stentor that I found looked more like the specimen shown in the top-right corner of the second image above.

The other organisms that I found were not as easily identifiable. In fact this was the hardest part of the assignment. It is difficult to identify an organism correctly based on structure (though this is no excuse). If a species evolves a structure that serves to a tremendous advantage then it seems plausible that other species can evolve a similar structure. The small size of these organisms does not help my classification because, since they are smaller, changes do not need to occur over a longer period of time. Regardless, this was a problem. A solution would be genetic analysis to determine the class of an organism. In order to do this some very expensive equipment is required. Classification by observation is the only method remaining (as there is not enough funding on this expedition for anything else). If the classification scheme is merely to identify the structures (regardless if the organism is what the original person who did the classification observed) then the current method is suitable. As mentioned the rest of the organisms that were observed are on the attached sheets of paper with some brief observations.

In conclusion the expedition was a success. Many new species of organisms that I have never seen before were found. Identification and classification could have used some help (possibly from an expert, guide, or book). When looking at the microscopic world there is a number of species that can be found each illustrating different methods of movement, hunting/eating, and maintaining life processes. Some have unique/ingenuous methods of maintaining life: some use many short cilia (like the Stentor) to guide their bodies while others use powerful flagella to propel themselves through the water, and still others that guide themselves towards sources of food and energy (especially some pseudopodia-bearing photosynthetic autotrophic protists). In the future improvements can be made to my knowledge of classification before entering the lab environment. Classification after the lab is exponentially more difficult because the only evidence remaining is poorly drawn static images.