How Would You Like It?

Your a Diatom, just walking along, minding your own Diatom business and this ugly Amobea looking character came along and picked you up, covered you with organic glue and used you like a brick to build his house?

This is the shell of a Difflugia Amoeba. I have posted a number of them here recently. Most Difflugia use bits of quartz and other rock to build a house to live in. Some are really beautiful, with points on the top like a crown. Some of those points are hollow and open on the end and some are hollow and open, and then the amoeba finds a nice chipped, pointed little piece of quarts and sticks it in the hole on the end of the point. It's quite amazing to see. A human jeweler could not do the same.

And then there is this guy. He grabs living Diatoms passing by, covers them with silicic acid, a kind of organic glue he makes, then carefully fits it into his shell.

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Nice shot of the Diatom..there are thousands of shapes of these guys!

Squirrelsnest, the shell is of a Difflugia Amoeba, now vacant, but the Amoeba made the shell out of diatoms, which also have many shapes. There are actually more diatom species in the oceans though, than in fresh water.

Fascinating stuff Micth.

Thanks Bas, the range of shapes and types of theses shelled amoebas is very large. People spend their whole lives studying just these guys alone. They are even now getting DNA from them to compare against other species. It's amazing.