I Found Another Specimen Of A Super Rare Organism Yesterday!

i found another specimen of a super rare organism yesterday!

this is a rare and remarkable ciliate, a single-celled organism called Metopus verrucosus.

a few neat facts about it:

it’s an anaerobic organism! this means it prefers to live without oxygen

it lives deep in the mud of sulfur- & methane-rich bodies of saltwater. this one was found in the salt marsh estuary on the side of the garden state pkwy in south New Jersey!

it couldn’t survive in these noxious conditions by itself, though! the fuzzyness covering it’s cell is actually a type of bacteria that symbiotically lives on M. verrucosus.

this bacteria has the ability to metabolize sulfur and/or methane, processing these volatile stinky chemicals and turning it into energy, that it then shares with M. verrucosus!

i’m the only known person with this kind of footage of M. verrucosus! the paper The Santa Barbara Basin is an Oasis of Symbiosis has the only other photo i’ve seen of this organism, and it’s actually an HVEM (electron microscope) photo of a cross-section of the cell showing it’s endosymbiotic bacteria.

here are some more photos i took of other specimens:

M. verrucosus dividing (asexually reproducing)

labelled drawing i did of it! transcription: b.) ectosymbiotic bacteria ~ ci.) elongated cilia (hair-like structures used for locomotion) ~ co.) contractile vacuole (kinda the ciliate equivalent to lungs) ~ ma.) macronuclei (where the DNA is stored) ~ o.) oral groove? (where i think the mouth-like opening is?) ~ the scale bar is 20 μm

Metopus verrucosus; observed on 6/22/22 in a salt marsh sample; on the side of the garden state parkway, south of ocean city, NJ. sample collected 3/20/22, and the sample sat shut tight on my desk for maybe a month, exposed to my aquarium light. it popped open w/ considerable effort, releasing a methane gas mixture w/ a hiss. the smell lingered for a good 30 minutes & dmi (my partner) asks; "...did you just fart?" ~ identified on inaturalist by bdstaylor, who described it as a "slenderly fusiform ciliate, with AZM (?), slightly twisted in the anterior, CV (contractile vacuole) in posterior, pellicle ornamented with "warts". if this is M. verrucosus, as i think, it is something fairly rare. i'm not sure there are any microphotographs of it (& not to many drawings, either!)

Metopus verrucosus is a rare & uncommon ciliate! it lives in marine habitats, characteristically in Beggiatoa (filamentous sulfur reducing bacteria) high-sulfide environments; oxygen-poor environments; it's anaerobic! ~ dimensions & appearance: 100-140 μm long, ~20 μm at it's widest. "fusiform" (spindle-shaped), elongate & thin, wider & twisted anterior (front). long cilia, especially on anterior. organelles: 3 macronuclei, seemingly no micronuclei, posterior contractile vacuole. ⟡ special feature ⟡ ectobiotic tufts of bacteria, from its macronuclei to behind the oral groove. most likely symbiotic -- M. verrucosus lives in sulphidic sediments. in order to survive such conditions, it seems to have formed an ectosymbiotic relationship with an unknown, possibly sulfide-reducing and/or methanogenix bacilliform bacteria, which adorn its pellicle (surface) in tidy tufts.

Reblog and write the opposite of your URL

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read later save penicilin atibiotics

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look at these gorgeous bronchial cartilage cells!

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medicine microscopy biomedicine scientists of tumblr they look like eyes 👀

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Hey... what the fuck???

So I read the article, and this is super cool. Basically what happened is that they let a drop of butyl alcohol out from a syringe onto the surface of another liquid, and it just... hung out there? For a very significant amount of time, too. In the past, this type of "droplet levitation" has only lasted a few milliseconds max, but this droplet was staying levitated without any external forces applied for tens of minutes.

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Remember, folks, never pay to access a scientific article. Use a site like Sci-Hub, or failing that, e-mail the authors and request the data you need. Elsevier and their ilk are hoarders and thieves of knowledge, and they don’t deserve one cent more. Poach and pirate away; it is entirely justified.

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