When is a lichen not a lichen?

 Okay. I had forgotten about these mushrooms and their companions. Matt, of Sitka Nature, commented on my post about those little green balls, reminding me. He sent me a helpful link to MycoWeb. Thanks, Matt!

The green balls are algae, always associated with the mushroom Lichenomphalia umbellifera, those little mushrooms growing over the logs on the forest floor. I had mentioned them last November, looking at the mushrooms, but I described the algae as a "dark green, crumbly-looking growth".

Lichen agaric mushrooms with lichen, moss, and "dark green stuff".

Well, they're not crumbly; they're shiny, damp balls. And though they look dark green in the shady woods, under a light they may be yellow-green to bluish.

More mushrooms, lichen, dead leaves, red sorrel, and the green algae.

Under the microscope, green algae swarm over a baby moss.

From the page on MycoWeb:

This small omphaloid mushroom is actually a lichen. The mycelium of Lichenomphalia umbellifera is symbiotically associated with the green alga Coccomyxa and forms tiny, granulose to globular bodies near the base of the agaric that were originally described as Botrydina vulgaris. Botrydina was considered a primitive lichen and has a complex arrangement of algal cells in a compact hyphal system.

A lichen is not one organism. It combines two or three different species. Usually, they combine so that they appear to be one thing, like the Cladonia in the photos above.

A lichen is not a single organism. Rather, it is a symbiosis between different organisms - a fungus and an alga or cyanobacterium. Cyanobacteria are sometimes still referred to as 'blue-green algae', though they are quite distinct from the algae. The non-fungal partner contains chlorophyll and is called the photobiont. The fungal partner may be referred to as the mycobiont. (Australian National Herbarium)

This combination, the mushroom and the algae break the rules; they grow together, but each keeps their own form. The alga, Coccomyxa, (which describes them in the scientific notation as "Cocco" - seed, and "myxa" - mucus, referring to their shape and texture) grows near, or at the base of the mushrooms, on rotting wood or damp soil. Because they contain chlorophyll, they capture sunlight, even down there in their dark hideouts, producing nutrients for the other half of the partnership.

While I was looking at the algae and lichens under the microscope, I discovered a lively collection of critters.

Spider, running. She kept dashing across my field, always in a great hurry. The pale green lobes are squamules of Cladonia lichens.

Little black mite. There were many of these.

And a pretty little springtail, Entomobria sp.. Many of these, too, all very busy.

I took their moss and lichen outside to a shady corner of my garden. I hope they like it there.

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Bueno. Se me había olvidado este hongo y sus compañeros. Matt, el dueño de Sitka Nature, puso un comentario en mi último post sobre esas pelotitas verdes; una gran ayuda, por cierto. Me envió un enlace para el sitio MycoWeb. ¡Gracias, Matt!

Las pelotitas sí son algas y siempre crecen en relación con el hongo Lichenomphalia umbellifera, esos honguitos que crecen en los troncos podridos en el suelo del bosque. Las había mencionado el noviembre pasado, viendo los hongos, pero describí el alga como "de un verde oscuro, friable".

Pues no son friables; son pelotitas brillosas, húmedas. Y aunque parecen de un color oscuro allí en las sombras del bosque, bajo la luz resulta que pueden ser amarillentas, verde claro, o hasta azul.

Primera y segunda fotos, los hongos, con líquenes Cladonia y el alga.

Tercera foto: bajo el microscopio, las algas cubren un musgo nuevecito.

De la página de MycoWeb:

Este pequeño hongo "omphaloid" (con ombligo) es realmente un liquen. El micelio de Lichenomphalia umbellifera se asocia en simbiosis con el alga verde Coccomyxa y forma cuerpos miniaturos globulosos o en grano, cerca de la base del hongo, los cuales antes se nombraban Botrydina vulgaris. Botrydina se consideraba un liquen primitivo y tiene una organización compleja de células de alga en un sistema compacto de hifas.

Un liquen no es un solo organismo. Lleva en combinación dos o tres diferentes especies. Casi siempre, se unen de forma que aparecen ser una cosa, como por ejemplo, los líquenes Cladonia de las fotos.

Del Herbario Nacional de Australia: 

Un liquen no es un organismo. En cambio, forma un simbiosis entre organismos diferentes — un hongo y un alga o una cianobacteria. A las cianobacterias todavía se les nombra a veces como algas verde azuladas, aunque son bastante diferentes de las algas. La pareja que no es hongo contiene clorofila y se llama el fotobionte. El hongo se puede llamar el micobionte.

Esta combinación particular, deshecha las reglas. Crecen juntos, pero cada organismo mantiene su propia forma. El alga, (que se describe en su nombre científico como "Cocco" es decir, semilla o frutilla, y "myxa", que quiere decir moco, refiriéndose a su forma y textura) crece cerca de la base del hongo en madera podrida o tierra húmeda. Porque contienen clorofila, se aprovechan de la luz del sol, aun aquí en sus escondites oscuros en en fondo del bosque y proveen los nutrientes que usa el hongo.

Mientras miraba los líquenes y las algas bajo el microscopio, aparecieron varios animalitos bastante activos.

Cuarta foto: una ar­aña, corriendo. Los lóbulos de verde claro son las escamas del liquen Cladonia.

Quinta foto: un ácaro negro, brilloso. Había muchos de estos.

Sexta foto: una brincacola Entomobria sp. También había varias, todas muy ocupadas.

Al final, llevé los líquenes con su carga de bichitos a una esquina sombreada de mi jardín. Ojalá la encuentran cómoda.

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.

Did Terry Pratchett watch barnacles?

Searching for one thing, I stumble upon so many distractions! Like these tiny aquarium residents, seen while I looked for snail fur.

Miniature orange-striped green anemone, Diadumene lineata

This was taken under the microscope, hiding in a dimple in a small snail shell. One of many, almost invisible to the naked eye. And each one, as I watched, never stopped moving, swelling, shrinking, waving, closing and opening the tentacles.

Another barnacle.

Feeding barnacles have their own special form of camouflage. They spread out their cirri (those modified legs), sweep them through the water, pull them back, close, open, spread out the cirri again ....  Say you're a fish, wanting a mouthful of barnacle legs; just wait and catch them open. Or a watcher with a camera; should be easy, right?

But no: the barnacles have no rhythm. Just when you think they should be opening — now! — and press the shutter, they hold back a half-second. The next sweep is just a tad early. Then a toe sticks out, right on time, but the pesky critter aborts the sweep. The fish goes hungry. I am stubborn, but mostly, I give up, too.

Was this where Terry Pratchett got his idea for Vetinari's clock?

The clock in Lord Vetinari’s anteroom didn’t tick right. Sometimes the tick was just a fraction late, sometimes the tock was early. Occasionally, one or the other didn’t happen at all. This wasn’t really noticeable until you’d been in there for five minutes, by which time small but significant parts of the brain were going crazy. [Going Postal by Terry Pratchett]

Tiny, tiny, really tiny shrimp-like thing.

This little critter kept dashing across the shell under the microscope. The head on the right is of one of the isopods that I found a couple of weeks ago; they measure about 2 to 3 mm. long. That makes the little shrimp thing a bit under 1 mm. long.

The inner tube of the large moon snail shell, against the backdrop of the outer shell. (Camera)

Here you have to look closely; along the edge of that tube, the worms that are everywhere on this shell, stand up against the green background, each one spreading its two tentacles out into the water. On the far right, the tentacles belong to another of the orange-striped green anemones.

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Cuando ando buscando alguna cosa cualquiera, ¡se me presentan tantas distracciones! Como estos pequeñas criaturas que viven en mi acuario, que vi mientras buscaba pelo de caracol.

Primera foto: una anémona Diadumene lineata, la de las rayas anaranjadas. Esta la vi bajo el microscopio, escondida en un hoyuelo en una concha de caracol. Una de muchas, todas casi invisibles bajo el ojo sin ayudas. Y cada una, mientras observaba, nunca dejó de moverse, hinchándose, contrayéndose, agitando los tentáculos, abriendo y cerrándolos.

Segunda foto: otro bálano. Los bálanos que están buscando sus alimentos tienen su forma muy personal de camuflaje. Estiran sus cirros (esas patas modificadas), peinan el agua, vuelven a encerrar los cirros, cierran, abren, estiran los cirros ... y así siguen. Pon que eres un pescadito y se te antoja una mordida de esos cirros; solo hay que esperar a que estiran las patas y morder, ¿no? O que estás esperando con un cámara; fácil, ¿verdad?

Pero no. Los bálanos no siguen ningún ritmo. Justo cuando crees que se van a abrir —¡ahora! — e imprimes el botón de la cámara, se atrasan un medio segundo. La siguente apertura es un poquitito temprano. Luego se asoma el punto de un cirro, justo a tiempo, pero el animal infeliz se arrepiente y se vuelve a esconder. El pescadito se queda sin su antojo. Yo soy terca, pero casi siempre también me rindo.

¿Será aquí en donde el autor Terry Pratchett sacó la idea del reloj de Vetinari?

El reloj en la antesala del Señor Vetinari no hacía "tick" correctamente. A veces el "tick" ocurrió un segundo más tarde de lo debido, a veces el "tock" ocurría un poco temprano. de vez en cuando el uno o el otro ni siquiera salía. Esto no se hacía notar hasta que hubieras estado esperando por cinco minutos; ya para entonces partes pequeñas pero importantes de tu cerebro se estaban volviendo locos. —"Going Postal" por Terry Pratchett.

Tercera foto: un animalito estilo camarón pequeñísimo. Este bichito nadaba rapidamente de un lado a otro del campo bajo el microscopio. La cabeza a la izquierda es de uno de los isópodos que observé hace unas semanas; estos miden unos 2 o 3 mm. de largo. Comparando los tamaños, el camaroncito medirá menos de 1 mm.

Cuarta foto: hay que mirarla de cerca. Es el poste central del caracol "luna" visto en frente de la capa interior de la misma concha. Si ves de cerca, puedes descubrir los gusanos de tubo que viven en todas partes en esta concha. Cada uno extiende sus dos tentáculos al agua. El grupo de tentáculos a la izquierda es otra de esas anémonas de rayas anaranjadas.

Muddy buddies

 In a handful of moss:

The tiniest snail I've ever seen.

How does he keep so clean, sliding through all that mud?

With a young sowbug. And the snail hidden inside his shell.

The snail is about 1mm. across the shell. Or less.

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En un manojo de musgo y lodo, se encuentra el caracolito más pequeño que nunca he visto. En la segunda foto, le acompaña una cochinilla juvenil, midiendo algo menos que medio centímetro. El caracolito mide aproximadamente 1mm.

Me pregunto como es que se mantiene tan limpio, deslizándose sobre ese lodo.

Sticky eggs

Every spring I hope to see the herring spawn. So far, every year I've missed it. But I got down to the shore a few days later, and found a coating of roe everywhere.

A handful collected off the sand.

Herring roe on washed-up eelgrass.

The herring come in huge, dense schools—sometimes several kilometers long. Once they reach the spawning grounds, each female releases up to 40,000 clear, sticky eggs. The eggs stick to everything; they stick to the eel grass…they stick to the sea lettuce…they stick to the kelp…they stick to the rocks…they stick to the shells…they stick to the barnacles. In fact, there’s so many eggs that they don’t all get a chance to stick before the waves and the tide wash them up on the beaches—sometimes forming masses of eggs a foot or more deep. (Return of the Brants)

The eggs weren't a foot deep on the shore of Oyster Bay, just several inches deep all along the outer shore, and on everything tossed up by the tide.

MIllions and billions of eggs.

I was looking for kelp, to maybe cheer up my plumose anemone, but along the whole length of the Oyster Bay shore, inner and outer, I didn't find even one piece. Next time.

Pacific herring eggs are negatively buoyant. By depositing many layers of eggs on fronds of kelp, the spawn of herring has been known to sink entire kelp forests. Upon hatching and the release of tiny, swimming herring larvae, the forests rise again. (Raincoast.org)

I brought home a few handfuls of egg-laden eelgrass for my hermits and crabs. They usually like anything that grows on eelgrass. But not this time; a few of the crabs nibbled on eggs, but the hermits left them strictly alone.

It makes sense; the hermit crabs are scavengers; they don't take live food. The minute it dies, it's fair game.

I looked at the eelgrass under the microscope.

A blade of eelgrass with herring eggs.

More eggs. They are white, without a purple or green eelgrass backing.

A few days later. Each egg has a white blob inside. I don't see any movement there, but around the edges teeny copepods swim happily.

After a day in the tank, the eggs started to fall off the eelgrass, and coat the sand at the bottom, just as they did on the shore.

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Año tras año, en la primavera, los arenques llegan a nuestras playas para depositar su hueva. Y año tras año, yo llego tarde para verlos. Ni modo: por lo menos esta primavera, llegué a tiempo para ver los huevos que habían depositado.

Cada arenque desova hasta 40.000 huevos. La mayor parte no llegan a nacer; se los comen los pájaros, las focas, mamíferos como por ejemplo los mapaches, y hasta los osos. 

Los huevos son pegajosos, y se adhieren a todo lo que tocan; algas marinas, piedras, los percebes y caracoles, hierba Zostera, kelp, y hasta la arena de la playa, donde forman una capa que puede llegar a 30 cm. de hondo.

Recogí una bolsita llena de hierba con hueva para los cangrejos y ermitaños en mi acuario; siempre les gusta una poca de variedad en su dieta. Pero los ermitaños no la comieron; son carroñeros y no comen comida viva.

Después de unos dias, los huevos se depegaron y cubrieron el suelo de mi acuario, tal como lo habían hecho en la playa. Pero no tan hondo, claro.

No sé si alguno de los pecesitos vayan a nacer en mi tanque. Ya veremos.

Micro beasties

I bought myself another microscope. A cheap one, for students, with low magnification, but like the even cheaper one I'd had a few years back (that didn't last long), with the ability to take photos. The one I had been using up to now was for my eyes only.

Tonight, I set it up and collected some stuff from my aquarium; a teaspoonful of sand, a fragment of seaweed, a few empty (or so I thought) shells, and one of the smaller hermit crabs. Arranged them on plastic lids, since they needed to be kept in water, shoved them under the 'scope, and tried to focus. It's a bit difficult when your target keeps running away; even the seaweed was carrying mini-critters on the move.

Pacific rose seaweed, Rhodymenia pacifica. With worm and snails.

This delicate (but oh, so durable in my tank) seaweed is a sheet with one layer of cells. Here, each cell is visible. The fragment was about 3 mm wide. The worm, that looked like a hair, but crawled about slowly, is about as wide as one seaweed cell. Even through the microscope, I didn't recognize the dark patches, but once I blew up the photo, I see that they're all snail shape. No wonder I always have a batch of new tiny snails climbing the walls!

Another snail. Shell only, abandoned in the sand.

This was in the teaspoon of sand. The snail shell is about as large as the larger sand grains. Still tiny. With everything under a film of water, the microscope LED lights produce glitter. I edited out what I could without destroying what is underneath, but the tiniest white specks are moving critters, all constantly in random motion, sort of like a swarm of midges. Some of the brighter patches of light were pulsating, squirming something-or-others. I managed to see a couple of worms and something with legs before they hid under the sand grains again. Some of the sand grains were bouncing; there was something busy underneath.

On an old cluster of empty barnacle shells, a colony of orange-striped green anemones has settled in.

One of my smaller hermit crabs.

I've been wanting to get a good look at these hermits for a while. They look like hairies (Pagurus hirsutiusculus), but never seem to grow up to the expected size. Maybe I'm not giving them enough time. This one certainly looks like a hairy; banded green antennae, blue marks on the legs. But those two rows of lumps on the pincer arm look interesting: I'll have to examine more of these little guys.

A couple of periwinkles.

And a tiny snail, half the size of the smallest periwinkle, on the move. With sand grains for size.

This is fun! Let it rain!

Between the grains of sand

With a good microscope handy, I've been able to look more closely at what's happening on the White Rock beach. Last Tuesday, I brought home a few small containers of sand and water from the contaminated area. I've been examining them to see what's alive, down there between the sand grains.

Wet sand, as my camera sees it. The little orange specks are alive.

I've been taking notes, mostly sketches of what I see, and I've scanned a few pages. I can't identify any of these things, but they give an idea of what's there. Everything I drew was alive and moving. A couple of times, a humongous (or so it seemed) copepod scooted by, at least 10 times the size of the biggest of these critters. The copepod would be about 1 to 2 mm. long.

The images may be pale; I find them easier to see by clicking to get a full-size photo.

Page 1. "Hamburger critters" like a split bun with something in between, boxes and pen-like things.

The ones labelled "1" and several similar ones don't quite match each other, but may be different stages of the same animals. # 5 is like them, but was the largest I saw. In the center, I could see something fluttering. They all swim slowly, along the length-wise axis. The "pens", # 4 and three similar ones, moved only their tips as long as I watched.

Assorted swimmers and jittery stuff.

#6 looks like a piece of threaded pipe. All the ones I saw were the same size. #8 is sort of like an amphipod, but extremely jumpy and hard to see, even though it was large. The antennae/legs/hair moved constantly.

#9 is one of the strangest animals. These are very tiny, like a balloon on a black thread. The top constantly bobs back and forth, always in the same direction.

And #10 is like a hairy flatworm, always changing shape; it has no features that I could distinguish.

Worm?

This was another of the larger animals. It lay against one of the sand grains, moving along sluggishly. Occasionally, something would startle it, and it contracted instantly into a collapsed balloon shape. A minute later, it stretched out again. I'm not sure if I saw tentacles at the forward end, or if they were a trick of the light.

Movers and shakers.

These were the weirdest of all. #13: a blob with a smaller blobby end. It turned around and around, circling about the narrow "head" end, as if it were attached. To what? It was in an empty space between widely-spaced grains.

#14 is tiny. I only saw the one. A rough pyramid, with a tentacle that I could see inside the body as well as out. It traveled with the tentacle in the lead.

#15. A tubeworm? Long and snaky, it hid behind a sand grain, extending the tip. Closed, it looked like a worm head, but it kept opening wide, showing a circular mouth. From time to time, it suddenly extended itself its full length again, as if to capture something.

#16. I can't figure this one out. A dark oval shape that spins and spins, always in the same direction, very rapidly. I could barely see the connection, but a tiny blob spun with it, sometimes close, sometimes a distance away, but always coming back as if tethered.

#17 looks like a baby sand dollar. #18, like a jellyfish. Many different animals start life as a medusa, a jellyfish shape; this could be any of them.

Besides all these and the copepods, I saw a few larger worms slithering about.

All this is good news: there's life down there. Two of the containers held sand and water from about 100 feet down the beach from the center of the dead zone; they were full of those "hamburger" critters, and others. But the two bottles from the center were basically empty; nothing but sand grains and a tiny worm.

Elva Paulson asked how big the dead zone is. I checked again, on Google maps. From where we access the beach, moving west, we went, the first time, 300 feet before I found anything alive. The next time I measured, the zone had extended and the borderline was 1700 feet down the beach; about 1/2 kilometer.

Tuesday, we began to find beach hoppers and tiny snails somewhere between those two distances. And the first bottles of sand I collected were well within the former dead zone, about 100 feet from the access.

Looking at the satellite photo, I notice that a creek comes down from the top of the hill, just there. I wonder if there's another construction project up top.