Rotiferology?

One of my favorite animals - maybe my very favorite - is a rotifer.  Rotifers are tiny  animals about the size of many single-cell organisms. But these little creatures are very complex with complete organ systems.  They live in almost any environment where moisture is available, from the oceans to moist moss.This year the first place prize for the Olympus BioScape competition went to Charles Krebs for his photo of a rotifer. The image can be seen at http://www.olympusbioscapes.com/gallery/2011/.

My image - not nearly so amazing, is, nevertheless, amazing to me. A rotifer has cilia (hair-like fibers) that wave to bring food into its mouth. When these wave it often looks like wheels turning, thus giving them the old name "wheel animalcules".  Inside the rotifer's body are trophi, or jaws which, when looking at them under a microscope, can often be seen chomping away on whatever miniscule flotsam they are devouring.

Rotifers have one or more "toes" at the bottom that emits a type of glue that enables them to adhere to the substrate then they have the ability to dissolve the glue so they can swim on to a better spot. Some rotifers are able to form a type of protective spore which enables them to live dried out for a very long time - perhaps years.

Below is a picture taken by Damián H. Zanette and obtained from wikimedia Commons.

To my knowledge and based on my research, all known rotifers are free-living: that is they are not parasites or carriers of disease. I really love these little critters. 

Ant Farm Deluxe!

My latest creation is an ant farm made of 2 liter pop bottles, some sand (a combination of soil/sand from our yard and sandbox sand), some tubing laying around the lab (can get that in the pet department),a couple of lids from lab-type water squirt bottles (you can just make a hole in the cap of the popbottle but be sure to seal around it where the tubing goes through). Oh, yes, and of course ants and ant food. The very expensive ant food I've been using is vending-maching Rice Crispie Treats. They seem to like them a lot. I put half the ants in one side and half in the other. They have all moved into one side and keep the food on the other. They do walk across the tubing.

I ordered the ants from Carolina Biological but you can order them from a lot of places. Of course, they don't ship queens. In the summer you can collect ants. These are carpenter ants - big ones. Don't use tiny ones - there's no way to keep them in.

I'm having so much fun watching them.