While cycling to an apple-blossom picnic, I stopped at a little puddle that looked very promising. Nice dark, water with pH around 5. I thought there might be some beautiful Desmids waiting for me. I filled the bottle, enjoyed the picnic under the blossoming apple trees with friends, good food and Irish songs – and waited anxiously till the next day, when I was ble to take a look at my sample.
And this is what I saw:
Don’t they look like the famous Angry birds? I have never played the game, but I still haven’t managed to walk through my life without paying any attention to them.
The whole sample was full with Synuras, a groep of golden algae.
Golden algae are nice too, but many of them not possible to identify with only a light microscope. One needs to have electron microscope photo’s of the scales.
Next time I try to catch some pigs.
Literature
Kristiansen, J. & Preisig, H.R. (2007). Chrysophyte and Haptophyte algae. Part 2: Synurophyceae. In: Süßwasserflora von Mitteleuropa. Freshwater Flora of Central Europe. (Büdel, B., Gärtner, G., Krienitz, L., Preisig, H.R. & Schagerl, M. Eds) Vol.1, pp. [i-v], vi [vi-vii], 1-252. Berlin & Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.
Starmach, K. (1985). Chrysophyceae und Haptophyceae. In: Süsswasserflora von Mitteleuropa. (Ettl, H., Gerloff, J., Heynig, H. & Mollenhauer, D. Eds) Vol.5, pp. 1-515. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer.