You might like to call all the large Phacus with a long tail just longicauda. But no. There is more to it. Ever since Ehrenberg described the species in 1831 there has been a wide variety of names for different taxa in this group. A group of Polish researchers recently wrote a nice paper about the Phacus longicauda complex. They described 8 different species, that all have a long tail.There is a nest of Euglenid-experts in Poland. We had the great pleasure to have one of the best ones to be our guest at the annual meeting of the Finnish Phytoplankton Association last spring in Jyväskylä - prof...
The Technical Research Centre of Finland LTD (VTT) and the University of Turku, Finland are developing a simple, do-it-yourself test for detecting the presence of toxic blue-green algae in water:
http://www.utu.fi/en/news/articles/Pages/Novel-Testing-Device-for-Blue-green-Algae.aspx
At the moment it looks like this:
Picture: Pirjo Hakkarainen VTT
Now this should be taken to th next level - make it commercial. Interested? Contact VTT.
22-6-2016:
They still need somebody to commercialise it. Take a look:
Video
Hmm... I wonder if this can be used to 3dimensionate algae? http://www.fei.com/products/sem/teneo-vs-sem-for-life-sciences/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6vKZKXonjHpfsX57essXaGg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YIET8J0aPyQAgobGp5I5FENTrjYTK1jt6QMUw%3D%3DIt would make approaching the wonderful world of alge so much easier to all the people who now have to live - on a daily basis - without this precious flavouring their lives. Not to mention the benefit of being able to identify our little friends with less effort.Take a look at the video.
What a pleasure to read the article "Resolving variability of phytoplankton species composition and blooms in coastal ecosystems" of Riina Klais, James E. Cloern and Paul J. Harrison in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, where they point out the importance of microscopical analysis of phytoplankton in the following way: "Despite of the preliminary difficulties in using the existing phytoplankton time series data for cross system comparisons, most studies that have been global to date have used either model outputs or satellite observations, and even the latter do not come close to the level...
Or two actually. That is what I see here - a young bull running around on the green, green grass of his first spring, looking curiously around for the wonders of the world: But then again, not many people have told me I lack imagination. Others just call this algae Mesostigma viride. Me too, when counting. The young bull expression comes from the two pyrenoids on each side of the cell and the ”lightly saddle-like bent” body, as Skuja (1948) describes the form of the cell. The flatness of the cell supports the impression of the saddle: What also catches the ey...
Foldscope is coming!Soon the microscopic world is within reach to everybody. And not only for fun, but for the benefit of all mankind. I'm happy to be involved in this project.Like they say:"Finally, we are as excited about scaling up this project as you are about using and sharing the microscopic world with everyone. We hope to build a community that grows with time, is passionate about teaching each other the mysteries of the microscopic world and finally has empathy towards the divide that exists in access to scientific tools and wants to contribute positively towards eliminating the same."...
In two samples a lot Nephrochlamys-cells. Were they really N. allanthoidea instead of the more common N. subsolitaria (nowadays N. rostrata, according to Nygaard, Komárek, J.Kristiansen & O.M.Skulberg 1986 (which I have not yet had the pleasure of reading - you can throw a copy this way, if you are passing by))?If all goes well, N. allanthoidea very easy to identify. One can see the short, blunt wing-like extensions on the sides of the mother cell, like here in the original drawing of Korshikov. Korshikov 1953But sometimes it does not have them. I'd say, keep on looking, for other...
are now available on the net: http://www.ioc-unesco.org/hab/index.php?option=com_oe&task=viewDoclistRecord&doclistID=135. Wonderful!Except that I don't speak Spanish. But I mean, in priciple, great that articles are available in this easy way. More, please.
... to be able to see the whole chamber bottom with the magnificent oil immersion objectives while counting algae with the Utermöhl method! Most of the chambers on the market are made for dry objectives. An oil immersion objective is so close to the bottom of the chamber that it bumps into the thin piece of metal that is holding the bottom glas before you can see the edge.Well, not any more! I developed a chamber where you can see the whole bottom with your wonderful oil immersion objective. Still testing it a bit. More news when this new invention reaches the next step. Stay tuned. Literature...
Suddenly a whole bunch of Closterium -algae in several water samples. Normally you only see one or two per sample. And what would it be? It did not fit perfectly anywhere. It resembled very much Closterium aciculare, but both Coesel & Meesters (2007) en Ruzicka (1977) and also John & Williamson (2009) state that the width should be at least 4 µm. These were way under (3-3,9 µm). And very, very slender: 240-390 µm, which made the length/width ratio climb to 70-104. And it was strangely curvy. Further more the ends of the cells were not more neither less beak-like, like Co...
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