APROCEAN

 tardibabe

It’s always mind blowing to see how much life and biodiversity a single drop of water from a lake can bear 🤯

How many different organisms can you see? 👀

There are tons of algae, rotifers, crustaceans, ciliates (mostly stentors, the trumpet shaped single celled organisms) and one very excited insect larva 😂 all of these microbes are at the bottom of the food chain, starting with algae (phytoplankton) which are primary producers, transforming CO2 and energy from sunlight into sugars by photosynthesis! These algae then get eaten by a lot of small herbivores including all of today’s critters like rotifers, stentors, crustaceans and insect larvae which are all placed in the second level of the food web. Those small organisms then get eaten by bigger carnivorous animals, like fish, frogs, birds and aquatic insects, which are classified in the third level of the food chain.Some organisms can be placed in both the first and the second level of the food web if they’re omnivores or if the way they feed changes over time. For example, when herbivorous tadpoles develop into carnivorous amphibians!

Unfortunately, contaminants like micro plastics or harmful chemicals can also be transferred from bottom up in the food chain. Toxic metals, chemicals and micro plastics are released from industrial, urban and agricultural sources where they make they’re way into different waterbodies and infiltrate the food chain. It’s no big surprise that micro plastics have been found in human blood along with other toxins like mercury that can attach to red blood cell and can even be found in our hair depending of the amount of fish there is in the diet 😳

Video taken with my iPhone mounted on a BA310E Motic microscope with an @ilabcam adapter 🔬