Plankton Observations! How exciting...

This week, we didn't even have to leave the classroom to do some awesome observations; we had pond water!

So we grabbed some microscopes and got down to work observing microscopic life.  YAY, plankton!

This is a worm, tragically killed in the field of study. 

This first microscope shot is of a worm.  Due to its absence of plant characteristics, such as chlorophyll, it is a zooplankton. Though it is magnified, the worm was visible to the naked eye.  Thus, it is a macroplankton.  In addition, the fact that it is a worm means that it belongs to meroplankton, which are not plankton for their whole lives.  The worm had very obvious eyes and a mouth, further proving its animal nature.

The majority of the life we observed, however, was not so large, nor so obvious in its identity.




Here, we have a very faint appearance by a phytoplankton.

This "plant plankton" is, unlike the unfortunate worm above, a microplankton; it cannot truly be seen by an unaided human eye.  It is also classified as holoplankton, meaning that it is in plankton form for its entire life cycle.  In order to survive in its environment, this organism adapted to be free-floating, well in reach of sunlight and the ability of photosynthesis.

This slide provides a clearer look at the long, stranded holoplankton.  The green color of the chlorophyll is almost clear, even against a rather grainy image quality.

Similar to the photo above, this plankton is phytoplankton, in the oxygen-producing, photosynthesizing catagory.  However, its segements and green coloring are clear.  Still more phytoplankton clings to the edge of this image, appearing as green smudges.  On both phytoplankton slides, there is a noted lack of zooplankton qualities, such as flagella, marking these organisms for what they are.

This adorable photo is not of some new cereal, nor the inside of a kalaidescope.  It is sand from Star Beach, in Japan!

This sand is certainly exceptional.  This photo is particularly wonderful, considering that there appears to be a small crescent moon nestled amongst the star-shaped particles in the center of the photo.  It looks like these pieces of sand were, unlike most sand, living creatures at one point or another.  Some meroplankton, such as coral, becomes sand at one phase in its existence (after its demise, of course).