Lab #13 : Final Observations of Ciliates and Soil Texture Analysis
Ava Tracy
Date: 11/15/18
Objectives: Improve skills on naming the ciliate biology and ciliate classification. Persist towards the discovery of our own soil ciliates. Isolate a ciliate from a soil sample and take a picture/describe its characteristics. Begin the presentation.
Purpose: To enable ourselves in naming ciliates so we can further classify our soil ciliates. This will make it possible to discover what ciliates are living in the soil near the BSB and why these ciliates chose this environment.
Procedure:
Ciliate Discovery Portion:
- Observe your soil using the dissecting microscope and record your observations.
- In order to observe the abundance and diversity and capture a ciliate from the soil, use your micropipette and remove 100 µl or so of liquid sample. Transfer this to a concavity slide, watch glass, or small glass petri dish in order to observe and further isolate. Record the number of ciliates observed.
- Isolation may be done by serial dilution (if there is more than one type of ciliate in your sample).
- Once you have captured a ciliate, transfer it to 500 µl of media in a clean 24 well plate.
Soil Texture:
- Take the test tube of soil that has been allowed to settle and measure the amounts of sand, silt, and clay in cm.
- Take these measurements and divide them by the total to get the percentages.
- Look at the pyramid of the sheet and try and identify with soil type is in the test tube.
Data and Observations:
Ciliate Data:
I was not able to find a ciliate this time around, but have a picture from last time! My culture was filled with bacteria, making it unable to use.
Soil Texture Data:
Total= 1.4cm
Silt= .4cm = 28.47
Clay= .4cm =28.47
Sand= .6cm =42.86%
Overall I got a soil texture of clay loam.
Storage information: The soil in the petri dish as well as in the test tube were collected
In conclusion: In conclusion, although I did not find any ciliates, I still have a good picture of my one ciliate from last time and I will continue to try and classify him into a group.
In the future: In the future I hope I can discover more ciliates and be more able to isolate them.
Picture: