Well surprise again....I took samples of my water today and although I did have many more nematodes and a ton of green and blue-green algae, one factor that is missing this time around are my diatoms. I'm am guessing that they have hit their peak (oh somewhere between day 71 and today (day 78) and died off. I'm going to test my theory again tomorrow and pull some more samples to see if I was just unlucky in my water selection. Its amazing...Diatoms commanded such a presence for most of my experiment and now, they are just gone. I guess that is the whole point of this experiment. To see the succession of microbes, the rise and fall of different species found in pond water. I'm a bit sad to see them all just disappear, they were my first "cool" discovery but I guess nematodes are more interesting as they are way more complex. The only thing about the nematodes is that they are so fast that it is hard for me to get a good photo of them. They seem to just wiz past my view and when you are looking for something the size of a few microns, a second is all you get sometimes. I have used corn syrup before to try to slow them down as the fluid is much more viscus, it impedes their speed but I can really make a mess of the microscopes and that is not something that I want to do.
I hope that everyone here doing this internship realize what this opportunity means and uses it to the fullest. There are people in our fields who never get a chance to do some of the interesting individual projects that we have. The free reign to explore our option and to collect data using anything that we can pretty much put our hands on.
I can say that this internship has really changed me and I have been lucky to have met some of the people that we have been working so closely with over the past few months. I won't see you guys next Thursday at the conference so I want to wish you all good luck and I can't wait to see the posters when you get back.
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