I’ve got LOTS of smol beans snacking on bacteria and chilling on an air bubble for you today 🥰
They’re called Glaucoma and are part of a ciliate group named the Hymenostomes, which includes Tetrahymena and Colpidium. If you look (very) closely, you can see they have a mouth that looks like lips that are flapping! They have three small ciliary membranes that helps them bringing water and bacteria to their mouth by beating together. Not only they feed on suspended bacteria but they can also graze on bacterial biofilms settled on a surface. I realized they were Glaucoma after looking at my videos afterwards so I now need to take a closer look at that flapping mouth 👀
Glaucoma can feed on a variety of different bacteria and they divide pretty fast; it takes them 4 hours to double their population 😳 they probably were very very happy I added some almond milk in the sample jar to promote bacterial growth 👀 Although, some species of Glaucoma can become big enough to eat their smaller Glaucoma friends 🙃
Unlike some of its relatives, like the ciliate Ophryoglena which I’ll show you very soon, that can be parasitic, Glaucoma is free-living! They mostly live in ponds and lakes and aren’t dangerous for humans at all 😊
References:
Foissner, W., & Berger, H. (1996). A user‐friendly guide to the ciliates (Protozoa, Ciliophora) commonly used by hydrobiologists as bioindicators in rivers, lakes, and waste waters, with notes on their ecology. Freshwater biology, 35(2), 375-482.
H., Lynn, Denis (2008). The ciliated protozoa : characterization, classification, and guide to the literature. New York: Springer. 23.
Nisbet, B. (2012). Nutrition and feeding strategies in protozoa. Springer Science & Business Media.
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