Which freshwater algae do we see?

In the video you will find some algae found in fens in the ‘Wortel Kolonie’ located in Belgium. The ‘Wortel Kolonie’ is a beautiful protected nature reserve with a complex of buildings that served as an asylum for vagrants long time ago. (Here you will find the information in Dutch, English, French and German).

This nature reserve contains a few shallow fens. On a summer day in July, some water samples were taken from two fens using a trawl net with a mesh size of 30 microns. Without examining these samples in depth, more than fifty different organisms, phyto- and zooplankton, were found. Only a few of them are shown in the video. In one of the algae we see a oogonium.

The names of the organisms in the video are deliberately omitted here, to give hydrobiology enthusiasts the opportunity to identify the organisms themselves.

Drill a hole before you can eat

The whelk or Buccinum undatum (Linnaeus, 1758) belongs to the snails (Gastropoda).

The whelk is a large, thick predatory snail with 7 or 8 turns. A deep seam runs between the turns. The mouth opening takes up almost half of the shell and ends in a sipho. On the surface there are horizontal ribs and clear vertical growth lines. Often there are also vertical ribs at the top of the shell. It grows up to 11 cm high and 7 cm wide. The whelk has yellowish-white with dark spots. Whelks washed ashore are often dark blue, because they have been lying on the bottom of the sea for a long time.

Vorticella - The fastest bell in the world?

Vorticella is a genus of single celled organisms living in both marine- and freshwater habitats. The members of the vorticella genus are commonly referred to as bell animalcules because of their shape. The thing that makes bell animalcules unique are their long stalks which they use to attach themselves to a substrate, which could be things like rocks, twigs and even small animals. The stalks of vorticella resemble our muscle fibers but are able to contract a lot faster than our muscles are. If the cell gets disturbed, it’s able to contract the stalk with an impressive speed of up to 6 meters per second as a defence mechanism to get away from danger or possibly scare predators away.

Built for speed

The peregrine falcon is one of the fastest birds in the sky. During level flight, with motion generated by wing-beats alone, they can reach speeds between 60-100 km/h. This is one of the fastest known speeds for level flight.

Mint

Mentha spicata (Green Mint) is a low, creeping and rather invasive plant that is indispensable in a fragrant border. Mentha spicata blooms with small pale purple or pink flowers. It easily grows widely on all soil types and will certainly have to be kept under control. It is an herb with numerous uses, both kitchen use and medicinal. On the photo you can see covering hairs and glandular trichomes from which the typical aromatic substances are excreted.

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