• Question: What unexpected things do you find under the microscope?

    Asked by anon-253637 to Daire on 15 May 2020.
    • Photo: Daire Harvey-Carroll

      Daire Harvey-Carroll answered on 15 May 2020:

      All sorts of things! I try to work in a sterile environment – that means I shouldn’t have any bacteria or fungi on my plant unless I put them there. But I still get bacteria that I didn’t expect inside plant cells and moving around on the surfaces of leaves. The exciting thing about this is that these were probably passed to the plant from its parents when it was just a seed!

      Transferring helpful bacteria as part of a “microbiome” from parent to offspring is a way that parents can help their offspring get set up in life – the same thing happens in animals and humans.

      I’ve also found tiny animals – like tardigrades or water bears and little insects that are way too small to see by the naked eye! There’s a whole amazing world of creatures, living, struggling and dying going on all around us that we can never access with our a microscope!

Comments

  • Photo: Steve T

    Steve T commented on :

    I love looking down the microscope – there is just so much to see! My job involves looking at lake water down the microscope, to examine the creatures that live there. Sometimes I grab samples from my pond, the local canal and the birdbath for fun too! You can find many hundreds of microscopic species (like bacteria, algae, protists, little crustaceans and insects…and more!). What you find can tell you something about the quality of the habitat too – the species there might indicate whether water is rich in nutrients and oxygen, for instance. My favourites are probably copepods (look them up if you like) – they are like little shrimps and they have fascinating life cycles.