#pediastrum

"Of course, these shapes aren't just for fun. An organism's shape is connected to the world it lives in, though sometimes the factors shaping them are beyond our understanding. It can be difficult at times to narrow down why a microbe takes on a particular shape when the reality of the microcosmos is that in any environment, you can find a whole plethora of shapes that might seem to have nothing in common."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Diversity of Shapes in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

I ripped my pants on a big quartzite boulder at my field site and finally mended them. I picked Pediastrum, a green algae colony that was super plentiful there. The blue ones are Aphanothece I think that I’ve also seen there : )

"Almost. I mean, they are animals, and at the end of the day, you don't have to be tiny to be a weird-looking animal. But animals have the advantage of many, many cells to build their different bodies. On the other hand, unicellular organisms like bacteria and protist, have less to work with, yet they manage to take on so many strange and unusal forms."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Diversity of Shapes in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

"Of course, there are many protists that take on very different shapes, whether that's for defense or for food or for some other reason. There are pediastrum, that form these spiky colonies that protect them from algae eaters. Then there are the Opecularia, which look like little flowers attached to braches, and whose cilia you can see at work gathering food as it floats on by."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Diversity of Shapes in the Microcosmos

“[T]he Zeiss engineer took 3.5 hours to put all the pieces together together and set everything up. But from there, well, it was all on James to observe what he could and experiment with his new microscope.”

Journey to the Microcosmos- We Upgraded Our Microscope!

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs