Taylor Hutcheson

Date:
March 23, 2017

Goals:

• Complete testing and analysis for the metadata of the soil sample.
• Continue the process of extracting ciliates from the non-flooded plate.

Procedure:

1. Use drops of water from the non-flooded plates to determine the pH of the soil.
   1. Using a plastic pipette, drop some of the water from the plate onto a piece of pH paper.
   2. Compare the color on the paper to that of a key.
2. Weigh the dry soil sample and compare it to its weight last week.
3. Continue searching soil samples for ciliates.

Observations:
After allowing my soil to sit in the non-flooded well for a week, I had high hopes that the ciliates would come out. Towards the beginning of the class period, I did not find a single organism. About an hour in, I finally found a very small, circular ciliate moving very quickly through the water-soil solution. I would then find one about every 30 minutes after that, but always moing too quikly to pluck from the solution using the pipette. I found these ciliates in the center of the plate, always near a body of soil rather then in an ocean of water (or what would be an ocean to a ciliate). Once, on the outer edge of the plate, I found a relatively larger and longer ciliate. I still good not harvest a single ciliate. I even tried taking small droplets of about 400 uL of the non-flooded plate’s water, and analyzing just those droplets.

Data:

1. pH: 6.0 – slightly acidic
2. Soil type: Silt loam
   58. Silt 58.8%
   59. Sand 29.4%
   60. Clay 11.8%
3. Dry weight of soil: 4.2 grams
   1. Water made up 0.8 grams of the soil’s weight

Future Experiments:
From here, it will be beneficial to continue the search for ciliates. I think a strategy I will pick up next lab will be checking a sample of soil under a compound microscope.