#ciliates

Spirostomum, photographed 1/14/26 at 250x (left) and 1/17/26 at 1000x (right). Among the most charismatic of the protozoans (or at least, as charismatic as a protozoan can be... they're all charismatic to me!) due to how large they get. You can see these folks without a microscope! That is, until they contract to a fraction of their size. It's done in a spiral motion, hence the name. The ones in these photos are pretty large, but ones I've found more recently have been quite small. Lots of variation! They can reproduce sexually by conjugation, but tend to do so with similarly sized individuals. I wonder how they tell?

So I've recently got into microscopy. It's like birdwatching, but I'm searching a small sample of pond water droplet by droplet for interesting organisms.

Spirostomum

Don’t shed a tear for this lacrymaria olor (swan’s tear) and gothic architecture stimboard for anon

I love this. Godspeed my little ciliate buddy!

Ciliate party, which tend to be thrown in tubes of old pondwater full of dead and dying things (which ciliates love). I wish I knew more about ciliate locomotion, like why some opt for a slow and steady pace while others twitch around seemingly at random. Speaking of which, see if you can spot Aspidisca, a jellyfish-looking fella who can practically teleport around.

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Stentor roeselii, one of my favorite recent finds. Stentors make up one of the more recognizable families of ciliates, with their conspicuous trumpet form. Much like rotifers, they use a crown of cilia to wrangle in bacteria and algae to consume. While this stentor is clearly not connected to anything, usually the tip of their tail is fixed to a surface so that they can feed passively. As far as I know, the contraction near the end of the video is a defense mechanism, which they use rather frequently.