More than 20 questions

It used to be so simple. Back when I was a kid, some **** years ago, we played "20 questions". And everything in the material world was either Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. 3 kingdoms, animals, plants and dead things. That was it.

Fast forward a bit. What about Fungi? Well, they weren't exactly either plants or animals. That's another kingdom. Oh, and the tinies? The bacteria? The single-cell critters? Were they animals or plants, or neither?

And so it goes. Biologists kept looking at living things and trying to sort them out. By 1970 (I was pushing 30), there were 5 kingdoms of living things, although there was some doubt as to where specific creatures belonged.

The world is never so simple. Nothing is ever simple, ever. (Hey, I've even begun to count rocks as living beings. See Disguised as Mountains.) What are viruses? Are they even alive? The more we looked at nature, the more complicated it got. Where do the algae fit? Should we sort by DNA, or by life strategies, or by history? Or another criteria?

Then there were 6 kingdoms, 7, 8; forget kingdoms, there were 3 domains, superkingdoms. Or realms. It gets confusing just trying to think about it. For a detailed history, see Wikipedia; kingdom (Biology).

How I got into this: I started to wonder where the slime moulds* fit. They're not plants, nor animals. My old Audubon Mushroom book calls them fungi. Recent guides call them Protists.

Species in the class Myxogastria are colloquially known as plasmodial or acellular slime moulds. Some consider the Myxogastria a separate kingdom. (Wikipedia, Myxogastria)

That Wikipedia kingdom page gets to them, finally, including them in the supergroup of the Eukaryotes (which includes us, the fungi and algae, my cat, and the forest at the end of my street).

There they are. "A phylogenetic tree based on rRNA data showing Woese's three-domain system. All smaller branches can be considered kingdoms." (Wikipedia)

So that's where we are. Or were the last I looked; tomorrow, there will be new data, new questions. There always are. Ma Nature won't be so easily pinned down.

There is ongoing debate ... (Wikipedia, again)

And there is a whole realm of things left out. Where are the lichens? Why aren't they listed?

Because they straddle 2 or even 3 kingdoms. They're a partnership of fungi, green algae (listed under plants) and sometimes bacteria, combined to form one living being. Or not; there's always an exception. Like these:

Lichenomphalia umbellifera, moss, slime mold, maple and alder leaves, baby huckleberry, old wood.

Zooming in. Two fungal fruiting bodies, green algae, and two slime mold fruiting bodies.

The "mushroom" is the fungal partner of the lichen; all that smear of deep green is the single-celled green alga, Coccomyxa sp., that forms the other half of the symbiont. These are never found separately.**

**(Never, until someone finds one. Like crows are never white and swans are never black, until they turn up. "Never" is only an approximation of reality.)

And in that crack at the left, I'm pretty sure that ball on a stick is the fruiting body of a slime mold. Several others showed up in other photos of the same log. Which is where all this started.

*moulds or molds. Alternate spellings, British vs. American. We Canadians drop the "u" about half the time.

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Antes, todo era tan sencillo. Cuando era niña, hace unos **** años, jugábamos a las "20 preguntas". Y todo lo que existía en el mundo físico era o Animal, o Vegetal, o Mineral. 3 Reinos; animales, plantas, cosas muertas. Nada más.

Pasó el tiempo; aparecieron dudas. ¿Y qué eran los hongos? No eran ni plantas ni animales. Se necesitaba otro reino.  ¿Y las criaturas microscópicas? ¿Las bacterias? ¿Las criaturas monocelulares/ ¿Eran animales, o plantas, u otra cosa distinta?

Y así sigue. Los biólogos seguían examinando los seres vivientes y tratando de organizarlos. Ya en el año 1970 (yo andaba acercándome a los 30), se contaban 5 reinos de seres vivientes, aunque había dudas acerca de en cual de ellos algunas criaturas específicas deberían clasificarse.

El mundo no puede ser tan sencillo. Nada, nunca es tan sencillo. (Hasta he empezado a considerar las rocas como seres vivientes. Ve Disguised as Mountains.) ¿Y qué son los virus? ¿O se consideran seres vivos? Entre más estudiábamos el mundo natural, más complejo resultaba. ¿Dónde se deben colocar las algas? ¿Debemos separar las criaturas según su ADN, o según sus estrategias para vivir, o según su trayectoria histórica? ¿O según qué otro criterio?

Luego se nombraban 6 reinos, o 7, luego 8; olvídate de los reinos; eran 3 dominios, super-reinos. Imperios. Hasta tratar de formar una idea precisa, te deja enredada. Para una historia más detallada, mira Wikipedia: Reino (biología).

Como es que me metí en este lío: empecé a preguntar como se clasificaban los mohos mucilaginosos. No son ni plantas ni animales. My viejo libro de Audubon sobre Hongos los llama hongos. Guías más recientes los llaman Protistas.

Especies en la clase Myxogastria se conocen comunmente como mohos mucilaginosos plasmodiales o acelulares. Algunos consideran que los Myxogastria constituyen un reino separado. (Wikipedia, Myxogastria)

Esa página de Wikipedia sobre los reinos por fin llega a considerarlos, al incluirlos en el super-grupo de los Eukariontes (dentro del cual nos incluye, además de los hongos, las algas, mi gata, y el bosque al final de mi calle).

    1. Y allí están. "Un árbol filogenético basado en datos de rARN, mostrando el sistema de tres dominios de Woese. Todas las ramas menores se pueden considerar como reinos." (Wikipedia)

Bueno, hasta allí hemos llegado. O por lo menos, hasta allí estábamos la última vez que me fijé; mañana habrá más información, preguntas nuevas. Siempre hay. La Madre Naturalez no se deja definir tan facilmente.

Sigue el debate ... (Wikipedia, otra vez)

Y han dejado a un lado todo un reino de cosas. ¿Dónde están los líquenes? ¿Porqué no se incluyen  en estas clasificaciones?

Es porque se extienden sobre 2 o hasta 3 reinos. Son una asociación compuesta de hongos, algas verdes (que se clasifican ahora entre las plantas), y a veces bacterias, que se han unido para formar un ser viviente. O no: porque a toda regla hay siempre una excepción. Como por ejemplo, estos:

    2. Lichenomphalia umbellifera, musgos, moho mucilaginoso, hojas de arce y aliso, huckleberry nuevo, madera podrida.

    3. Visto más de cerca. Dos de los hongos, alga verde cubriendo la madera, y cuerpo fructífero de un moho mucilaginoso.

El hongo es parte del liquen, y toda esa capa verde oscuro está formada por el alga verde, monocelular, Coccomyxa sp.; que constituye la segunda mitad del simbionte. Estos dos organismos nunca se encuentran solas, por separado.**

**(Nunca, hasta que alguien encuentra uno de estos a solas. Como por ejemplo, los cuervos nunca son blancos, ni los cisnes negros, hasta que algún dia alguien los encuentra. "Nunca" es siempre solamente una aproximación general de la realidad.)

Y en esa grieta en el lado izquierdo de la segunda foto, estoy casi segura que esa pelotita sobre un tallo es el cuerpo fructífero de un moho mucilaginoso. Varios otros aparecieron en otras fotos del mismo sitio.Y aquí es donde todo esto empezó.

Biodiverse, very biodiverse

 We have some beautiful low tides coming up, but they're going to arrive here after dark. (Sunset these days falls around 7::30 PM.) I followed the tide as it started out in the late afternoon, and found anemones, feeding happily, then closing down as the water disappeared.

Window into a tide pool.

The surface of the water in the tide pool reflected the sky, but the shadow of my head revealed a pink-tipped green anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima, fully open. With it in this little tide pool are several rockweeds, and three red algae; a feathery, delicate one, a narrow-bladed species, and a broad blade; the white algae is a red that has been sun-bleached. On the right are strands of the brown Sargassum. And there are several fragments of the green sea lettuce, Ulva spp. Also present: periwinkle snails, limpets, and something orange, probably a sponge. And unseen, but always there in great numbers: the worms. And a clam on the sand nearby was spitting at me.

 

Still underwater, still waving those tentacles.

The colours of this anemone vary; the tips go from barely pink to red. The columns and the oral disc are sometimes bright green, in others they may be more of a yellowish cream. The green colour is usually due to the presence of single-celled green algae, but the anemone may also produce its own colour. The green algae are photosynthetic and provide a large part of the anemone's energy needs.

"Although the green colour present in some specimens is produced by the animals themselves, this process can only occur when the unicellular symbiotic alga Chorella is residing in their tissues." (Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest)

The lichens aren't the only composite species.

Very pink. The column is always covered by rows of tubercules, seen here as pale green bumps.

As the water recedes, the anemones start to shut down.

Edge zone; open tentacles on the right, closing, closed out of water.

And when the water is gone, they turn into yellowish donuts with cherry filling.

These anemones grow on rock. The sand has collected around them. As the sand dries, they will all shrink back to their base, and disappear from the surface, leaving only slight depressions. Until the tide comes in.

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En esta temporada, nos llegan unas buenas mareas bajísimas, pero (mala suerte) por este rumbo, la bajamar toca ya bien puesto el sol (que desaparece a las siete y media). A media tarde llegué a la playa y seguí el agua mientras se retiraba, encontrando unas anémonas, contentas con los tentáculos abiertos mientras había agua, y luego encogiéndose cuando se iba.

Foto #1: Una vista en un pocito mareal. La luz se reflejaba en la superficie del agua, pero mi sombra abrió una ventanilla, mostrando una anémona clonal, Anthopleura elegantissima, y varias algas. Se ven aquí, primero Fucus gardneri, luego tres algas rojas: una delicada, una de una hoja larga, y otra de hoja ancha. Las algas blancas son algas rojas quemadas por el sol. A la derecha hay varios hilos de Sargassum muticum, un alga marrón, invasiva. Y luego pedazos del alga verde que llamamos lechuga marina, Ulva spp. ¡Hay más! Varios caracolillos, unas lapas, y unas masas anaranjadas, probablemente esponjas. Y no se ven, pero los hay en gran número; los gusanos de varias especies. Y al lado del pocito mareal, una almeja me estaba escupiendo.

 Foto #2: Varias anémonas, todavía bajo agua, todavía agitando sus tentáculos.

Los colores de estas anémonas son variables; las puntas de los tentáculos van desde color de rosa hasta rojo fuerte. Las columnas y el disco oral son verdes, a veces brillante, a veces pálido. El color verde se debe a la presencia de algas unicelulares verdes, aunque a veces la anémona puede producir su propio color. Las algas verdes son fotosintéticos y proveen gran parte de los requisitos de energía de la anémona.

"Aunque el color verde presente en algunos de estos animales es producidos por los mismos, este proceso solo puede operar cuando la alga simbiótica unicelular reside en sus tejidos." (Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest)

Los líquenes no son los únicos que viven unidos con algas.

Foto #3: Una anémona con tentáculos de un color más vívido. La columna está siempre cubierta de estos tubérculos verdes.

Mientras desaparece el agua, las anémonas empiezan a cerrarse.

Foto #4: Mitad en agua,  mitad en seco. 

Foto #5: Y cuando el agua se ha ido completamente, las anémonas más bien parecen donas rellenas de jalea de fresa.

Estas anémonas crecen en la roca. La arena se acumula alrededor. Cuando esta arena ya se secó, las anémonas se habrán encogido aún más, dejando apenas una leve depresión en la superficie de la arena.

Hasta que suba la marea de nuevo.

Too much to see

 It has been said that, "coastal BC has a greater species diversity than anywhere else in North America". (Raincoast Conservation Foundation, in BC’s coastal biodiversity: the highest in North America, an article that completely bypasses marine invertebrates, but does pay attention to seaweeds; "In British Columbia, more than 500 species of macroalgae have been recognized, making up about 4.5 % of the world’s total marine algal species.")

Nowhere is this biodiversity more apparent than on the intertidal plain. With every cautious step at low tide, I crunch the shells of tiny animals, slip on seaweeds pink, red, green, brown and yellow, send critters scuttling and splashing for shelter, or squirting small fountains at my legs as clams and worms retreat deep under the sand. A tidepool is a multi-coloured, multi-textured collage, too varied to be sorted out on the fly.

I am reduced to taking photos at random, hoping something will come into focus on my computer screen.

Tidepool about 2 inches deep; my shadow at the bottom right.

At first glance, examining this photo, I see 9 separate species of seaweed:

• green sea lettuce
• red bladed algae; smooth, wide, translucent blades.
• pink crustose coralline algae, coating stones
• a green hairy seaweed
• a red seaweed, with stiff central blades, from which sprout thinner red "leaves"
• rockweed
• old eelgrass, with
• encrusting fuzzy algae along the blades (or these may be hydroids, an animal)
• yellowish algae coating an old clamshell and a snail (or hermit crab) shell.

But that's not all: under every stone, under every shred of seaweed, crabs and hermits, worms and small fish and assorted isopods and hunting whelks hide from the sunlight, and from my moving shadow. And, of course, hundreds of eggs. Among those not doing so good at hiding, I can see:

• a burrowing anemone, Anthopleura artemisia,
• snail shells which may house the original shell, or just as likely, a small hermit crab
• several limpets
• and a couple of legs of a kelp crab who thinks he's out of sight.

What looks like a single-culture mass of seaweed turns out to be another collage:

Bad (green) hair day.

In this photo the algae are the green hair, green sea lettuce, and that red-bladed alga. In the background; rockweed and a fuzzy brown seaweed. Snails and barnacles dot the rocks.

And I know I'm missing half of what's there!

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Se ha dicho que —las costas de Colombia Británica contienen una mayor diversidad de especies que la que se presenta en todo lo demás del continente — (del sitio Raincoast Conservation Foundation, en un artículo que olvida por completo el reino de los inveterbrados marinos, pero si nota de las algas marinas, que —en las costas de Colombia Británica se han reconocido más de 500 especies de macroalgas, constituyendo aproximadamente un 4.5 porciento de las especies de algas marinas mundiales.) 

En ninguna parte se nota más esta diversidad de especies que en la zona intramareal. Con cada paso que doy, tan cuidadosamente, aplasto una variedad de animalitos, me resbalo sobre algas marinas rojas, verdes, amarillas, color de rosa o de café, espanto varios animales que se apuran a esconderse bajo las piedras o que, retirándose dentro de la arena, hacen pequeños fuentes que bañan mis piernas. Una poza intramareal hace un "collage" de una multitud de texturas y de colores, tan variado que no se puede capturar a simple vista.

Me veo forzada a sacar fotos al azar, esperando que al verlas en la pantalla, se puedan entender.

La primera foto es de una poza intramareal, más o menos de 4 o 5 cm. de profundidad. 

A primera vista, veo hasta 9 especies de algas marinas:

• lechuga marina, Ulva spp.
• una alga roja de hojas anchas, lisas, translúcidas
• una alga coralina incrustante, color de rosa
• una alga verde en forma de pelos
• una alga roja con tallos tiesos, de los que brotan hojas delgadas
• sargaso vejigoso, Fucus spp.
• hierba marina Zostera madura, cubierta de
• una alga encrustante a lo largo de las hojas (o puede ser un hidroide, o sea un animal)
• una alga amarillenta creciendo en una concha abandonada de una almeja y en un caracol.

¡Pero eso no es todo! Bajo cada piedrita, bajo cada hoja de alga, se esconden cangrejos y ermitaños, gusanos y pescaditos, isópodos variados y bocinas cazadores, fuera de la luz fuerte del sol, y también huyendo de mi sombra. Entre los que no se escondieron perfectamente veo:

• una anémona, Anthopleura artemisia
• conchas de caracol marino, que pueden contener los caracoles mismos, o si no, cangrejos ermitaños
• varias lapas
• y un par de patas de un cangrejo "kelp" que cree estar bien escondido.

Segunda foto: lo que aparece una masa de una sola alga resulta ser otro collage. Las algas aquí son un pelo verde, lechuga marina verde, y la alga roja de hojas anchas. En el fondo se ven sargaso vejigoso y un alga café. Caracoles y bálanos toman el sol en las piedras.

Y por seguro, mucho se me pasa sin observar.

Little green balls

The rainforest floor is a living thing. Here, on a base of decaying wood, old, crumbly leaves, last year's evergreen needles and cones, broken twigs and scraps of bark, fungi and mosses intertwine, their roots and hyphal threads digging deep, binding the fragile soil together. Slime molds hide in crevices; lichens colonize surfaces from rocks to wood living and dead. Scurrying through the inch-high forests, busy springtails, mites, and spiders search for food; slugs and snails slide over the surface, eating algae and mushrooms.

It's a complex world down there. Nothing is ever just one thing.

Small stump (under a foot tall), with grass, moss, mushrooms, lichen, and green algae.

Mushrooms, moss, dark green algae and well-rotted wood.

Mushrooms, Cladonia pixie-cup lichen, moss, and algae. The leaves are red sorrel.

I was curious about that dark green coating on the oldest, dampest, most sheltered wood, and zoomed in on it.

Tiny green balls, from yellow-green to a deep blue-green.

This grows only in the darkest, most protected areas of the forest floor; at the bottom of stumps, on the shady side, on the underside of mushy logs, deep under overhanging evergreen branches. On an old log, half buried, half turned into soil, moss covers the exposed top, mushrooms and lichen grow down the sides, and under it all, where the sun never shines, there's this coating of damp, slimy green stuff.

In the photos, zooming in (and I took a hand microscope to the woods to double-check) it looks like it's made up of tiny balls. Just in case it was really miniature leaves, I brought a bunch of sticks home and looked at them all under the microscope.

Looks like balls. I can't see stems. The white spots are reflections of the lights of the microscope.

I'm assuming its a variety of algae. I can't find it on the web, possibly because I don't know what to look for.

What else was down there. tomorrow.

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El suelo de un bosque pluvial es un ser vivo. Aquí, sobre un base de madera podrida, hojas viejas, desbaratadas, los conos y agujas de árboles de hoja perenne caídos hace un año, ramitas rotas y fragmentos de corteza de árbol, una variedad de hongos y musgos se entrelazan, sus raices y hilos de hifa enterrándose hondamente, fusionando los elementos frágiles del suelo. Los mohos mucilaginosos se esconden en las grietas; los líquenes colonizan superficies desde piedra hasta madera, viva o muerta. En estos bosquecitos de unos cuantos centímetros de altura, animalitos corren de un lado para otro; colémbolos (brincacolas o saltadores), arañitas y garrapatas muy ocupados en buscar comida; babosas y caracoles deslizándose por encima, comiendo algas y hongos.

Es un mundo muy complicado. Nada existe por sí solo. 

Las fotos: 1. un tronquito, con musgos, hongos, líquenes, pastos, algas verdes.

2. Musgos, hongos, y algas verdes.

3. Y ahora con líquenes Cladonia "taza de duendecillo".

4. Más de cerca. Ese alga verde; pelotitas verdes.

Me llamó la atención ese organismo verde que se ve solamente en las partes más protegidas, más húmedas, más escondidas de la madera podrida. En un tronco caído, ya viejo, medio enterrado, bien suavizado, la parte superior, expuesta a la luz, llevará su bosque de musgos; en los lados y las grietas, crecen una variedad de líquenes. Y abajo, donde nunca pega el sol, donde las ramas de los árboles de hoja perenne lo mantiene en sombra perpetua, aquí crecen estas bolitas verdes.

5. Me traje varios pedazos de esa madera a casa para mirarlos bajo el microscopio. Sí, parecen pelotitas. No veo ningún tallo ni raices. (Las manchas blancas en la foto son reflejos de las luces del microscopio.)

Creo que es alguna especie de alga. Pero no lo encuentro en mis libros, ni en la red.

Que más vi allí, queda para mañana.

Snail on a messy wall

(Text in Spanish at the bottom: el texto en español sigue al pie de la página.)

A periwinkle snail climbed the wall of the aquarium, feasting on the algae that infests the glass.

Sitka periwinkle, Littorina sitkana. About 5 mm long.

Usually, I clean up the background, removing algae spots and the scratches on the glass. I left them as is, this time; the algae is an essential part of the scene; it's the snail's dinner. And the scratches belong there, too. The snails make them, dragging their hard shells over the surface of the glass. Algae take advantage of them to grab a toehold.

Un caracolillo, Littorina sitkana, que mide más o menos 5 milímetros de largo, se ocupó en comer el alga que crece en la pared del aquario.

Normalmente, limpio la fotografía, borrando las manchas del alga y las rayaduras del vidrio. Hoy las dejé porque son un elemento esencial de la situación; el alga es la comida del caracol. Y las rayaduras las hacen los mismos caracoles, arrastrando sus conchas sobre el vidrio. Y esas grietitas les sirven al alga para fijarse a la pared.

Tiny climber

No matter how well I scrub the inner walls of my aquarium, the edges stay green. Where the glass is joined with silicone, algae grow, becoming part of the adhesive material. And the littlest hermit crabs climb these strips of algae.

Hi, there!

It's complicated

The closer you get to the ground, the busier it gets. A mushroom on old wood turns out to be an entire garden community.

Lichen agaric mushroom (I think), with lipstick cladonia (lichen), moss, last summer's weed stalks,and a grass seed head.

Moving back to see the surroundings. Now there's the odd pixie cup lichen, a handful of Douglas fir needles, a sprinkling of brand new seedlings; two or four red leaves getting ready for the spring, fragments of big leaf maple leaves, and a coating of dark green algae on the old wood. Also present, but well camouflaged; several springtails.

Another mushroom/wood/moss/stems/grass group, including here a bird's nest fungus (where the old stem meets the patch of moss).

Zooming in on one of these lichen agarics. Latin name, Omphalina, meaning having a navel.

On Willow Point

The beach sometimes looks bare. A sprinkle of sand on sandstone, a few scattered rocks, a smear of sea lettuce, leftover tidewater; not much else.

Willow Point beach, looking towards Quadra Island and, in the distance, the mainland.

But slow down, crouch, look underneath rock overhangs, behind the stones ... the barren beach is full of life and colour.

Purple starfish, clinging to the bottom of a rock. With pink-tipped green anemones for company. And limpets and barnacles, of course.

An assortment of seaweeds. Green sea lettuce, yellowish rockweed, one (or two?) of the many stringy, bushy brown algae. a blob of sea cauliflower, and tasty-looking succulent seaweed, Sarcodiotheca gaudichaudii. (I love that name!)

Sea cauliflower with a garnish of sea lettuce, accompanied by rockweed leaves and brown alga shreds.

Rocks and mounds of brown algae, crawling with hermits and crabs, isopods and snails. Good feeding grounds for a pair of mallards, now leaving their unfinished dinner in haste because of that pesky photographer. (They came back as soon as I walked away.)

Worm caves and oyster grins

I bought an old abalone shell in a garage sale for a buck, 11 years ago. It sat on a shelf until I decided to use it in the aquarium as a hermit crab gym set. It has been very popular. The plumose anemone has chosen it as her permanent base, worms have built their tubes on the back, limpets sleep on the shiny floor, and the hermits still climb to the top to look at the world.

Over these ten years, much of the shell has dissolved into the water, and assorted algae have coated the rough outer side, creating interesting patterns. And colonies of tiny worms have made their homes in the pores, by now eroded into deep caves.

Outer rim of abalone shell, with algae and worms

Abalone shell, before being tanked, 2007. The outer shell is porous. The barnacle and tubeworm remains dissolved long ago.

The oyster, picked up on the beach after a storm, has been here only a few months. The shell was scrubbed white by wind and waves, but tank algae are at work here, too. And the oyster, not in the least fazed, is grinning.

Toothy grins

The oyster is a filter feeder, and pumps large volumes of water in, over the gills, where edibles are caught in mucus and moved down to the mouth.  What looks like teeth in those smiles are tiny tentacles. The gills are just behind them, sometimes visible when the oyster opens a bit wider.

Woodhus Creek after a dry summer

We discovered Woodhus Creek in 2010, after a rain. When we went back in 2010, (and again last summer) the sandstone bed was mostly dry. This year, 7 years and a day later, after this hot, rainless summer, it's even drier. Crispy, in parts.

Bare sandstone, and the bottom of the fish ladder.*

That same patch of stone, Aug. 16, 2012. The edge of the fish ladder is at the far left.

Shallow streams trickle down to the river below.

Alder leaf and evergreen needles, barely floating.

Near the edges of the creek, the stone wears moss This year, it's hard and crunchy. But down in holes worn through the sandstone, a few plants find moisture and shade.

And wherever there was water, there were water striders.

Two water striders. The shadows are always bigger than the insects, and usually a distance away, depending on how deep the water is and the angle of the sun.

One water strider, possibly an Aquarius remigis, on very shallow water. It has orange spots down the sides of its abdomen.

And another. Look closely at the feet; see how the water fans out into round or long feathery shapes? The legs have thousands of hairs to grab the surface.

Last July, I found many caddisfly larvae in these waters. I looked and looked for them this time; there was nary a one to be found. Too late? Too dry? I'll look again next year.

Still, the shallow puddles, even without larvae or water striders, were interesting.

Needles and a wing of an unidentified insect, floating over bubbly algae and pond scum.

More bubbly algae.

*And a grumble: in that first photo, there are two extraneous objects. One is my bag, which I brought in and hauled out, of course. The other is a two-litre orange juice container, emptied and left on the fish ladder. I found its plastic lid down in a pool. Why, people; why? Is it too much work to cart your leavings out?

I took it, and the lid, out with me. I'll even get a few cents for recycling it.

Blooming meadows

A couple of days ago, I posted a photo of a tiny beastie I'd just discovered in my aquarium.

Here it is again. A couple or three millimetres long.

Yesterday, I took dozens of photos of the general area, mostly on two oyster shells and the sand around them. I found several of the same animals.

There are two here. The colour is lighter, but the characteristic stripes are the same. And the size. I think they're baby snails, born in the tank. The little green things may be copepods, taking a break from their constant racing about.

Zooming in close like that, ignoring the parade of hermits and crabs and focusing instead on the background, I noticed how alive this "bare" surface really is.

Fertile fields. Algaes and diatoms, protozoa, and who knows what else. Pinks and purples and greens and blue-blacks. Good grazing for a tiny snail.

The hermit's shell is populated, too. Look at the edge, where the light shows up the tiny pink and green growing things.

It's turtles flowers all the way down.