Frontonia, dark field, 400×

What you see

Filmed in dark field: the organism shines against a black background, and edges and cilia look bright. At 400× inner details such as vacuoles, nuclei and cilia become visible.

Recorded on 6 November 2022. This loop is the whole 0:10 recording.

Points to check against your own sample:

• Shape and the arrangement of cilia around the mouth are what specialists use: a long proboscis (Dileptus), a flat knife-like body (Litonotus), a small sphere that jumps (Halteria).
• A single cell with cilia, a mouth area and food vacuoles inside; no jaw, no gut.

Full description and look-alikes: Other free-swimming ciliates.

Credit line

Video: MajkiAngelo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

MP4 1280×720 1.8 MB MP4 640×360 0.3 MB