Podosira stelliger, diatom with contents

[Rene]

After Päule's excellent images of cleaned diatoms  in his last topic:

https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/index.php?topic=10708.0

I thought it worthwile to add some images from Podosira stelliger with its typical chloroplasts. In preserved material (lugol) they generally do not show their beauty (it is generally too densely packed). But in this winter material it shows up pretty well. Even though lugols generally gives some shrinkage of the cell contents (last image!), it gives  good preservation for routine samples.

Unfortunately, stacking of these images like Päule has done does not work here, so I only show 3 of 7 images here. I'm not sure if Picolay would be able to show the inner contents in 3D??



Podosira (and related Hyalodiscus) shows a typical areolation pattern where the middle-part of the valve seems clear. At high magnification however you can detect structure, which does not permeate through the whole of the siliceous wall. The following images are cropped from the raw images at top, middle and lower level of the siliceous wall.


(60x/1.4, inverted microscope)

Best wishes, René

[rekuwi]

Lieber René,

solche Chloroplasten habe ich noch nicht gesehen - wirklich hübsch - wie Blümchen.
Wo hast Du diese Diatome gefunden? Mir ist diese Art bisher noch nicht untergekommen daher meine Frage.

Liebe Grüße
Regi

[Rene]

Thanks Regi.

It's a benthic species. But we come across it regularly in our plankton samples. Not very much though, but it's not rare either.

Of course you will have to be looking in the sea 

René

[Päule Heck]

Hi Rene,

very nice, indeed! I've never seen them alive before.

Päule

[Fahrenheit]

Hi René,

thank You for the fine pictures! I have never seen this interessting diatom alive.

Best regards
Jörg

[Jan Kros]

Hallo René

Nice pictures von diesen schönen Diatomee
Gruss
Jan

[Ulf Titze]

Hello René,

thanks for showing these beautiful pictures. To me it looks like a art-nouveau-sculpture - especially the third one  .

Sincerely

Ulf

[Rene]

Hmm, ja, Kunstforme der Natur!

We're often amazed by the drawings in determination handbooks: What the heck did Haeckel see? 

Thanks, René