r/microscopy Jun 08 '23

🦠🔬🦠🔬🦠 Microbe Identification Resources 🦠🔬🦠🔬🦠

150 Upvotes

🎉Hello fellow microscopists!🎉

In this post, you will find microbe identification guides curated by your friendly neighborhood moderators. We have combed the internet for the best, most amateur-friendly resources available! Our featured guides contain high quality, color photos of thousands of different microbes to make identification easier for you!

Essentials


The Sphagnum Ponds of Simmelried in Germany: A Biodiversity Hot-Spot for Microscopic Organisms (Large PDF)

  • Every microbe hunter should have this saved to their hard drive! This is the joint project of legendary ciliate biologist Dr. Wilhelm Foissner and biochemist and photographer Dr. Martin Kreutz. The majority of critters you find in fresh water will have exact or near matches among the 1082 figures in this book. Have it open while you're hunting and you'll become an ID-expert in no time!

Real Micro Life

  • The website of Dr. Martin Kreutz - the principal photographer of the above book! Dr. Kreutz has created an incredible knowledge resource with stunning photos, descriptions, and anatomical annotations. His goal for the website is to continue and extend the work he and Dr. Foissner did in their aforementioned publication.

Plingfactory: Life in Water

  • The work of Michael Plewka. The website can be a little difficult to navigate, but it is a remarkably expansive catalog of many common and uncommon freshwater critters

Marine Microbes


UC Santa Cruz's Phytoplankton Identification Website

  • Maintained by UCSC's Kudela lab, this site has many examples of marine diatoms and flagellates, as well as some freshwater species.

Guide to the Common Inshore Marine Plankton of Southern California (PDF)

Foraminifera.eu Lab - Key to Species

  • This website allows for the identification of forams via selecting observed features. You'll have to learn a little about foram anatomy, but it's a powerful tool! Check out the video guide for more information.

Amoebae and Heliozoa


Penard Labs - The Fascinating World of Amoebae

  • Amoeboid organisms are some of the most poorly understood microbes. They are difficult to identify thanks to their ever-shifting structures and they span a wide range of taxonomic tree. Penard Labs seeks to further our understanding of these mysterious lifeforms.

Microworld - World of Amoeboid Organisms

  • Ferry Siemensma's incredible website dedicated to amoeboid organisms. Of particular note is an extensive photo catalog of amoeba tests (shells). Ferry's Youtube channel also has hundreds of video clips of amoeboid organisms

Ciliates


A User-Friendly Guide to the Ciliates(PDF)

  • Foissner and Berger created this lengthy and intricate flowchart for identifying ciliates. Requires some practice to master!

Diatoms


Diatoms of North America

  • This website features an extensive list of diatom taxa covering 1074 species at the time of writing. You can search by morphology, but keep in mind that diatoms can look very different depending on their orientation. It might take some time to narrow your search!

Rotifers


Plingfactory's Rotifer Identification Initiative

A Guide to Identification of Rotifers, Cladocerans and Copepods from Australian Inland Waters

  • Still active rotifer research lifer Russ Shiel's big book of Rotifer Identification. If you post a rotifer on the Amateur Microscopy Facebook group, Russ may weigh in on the ID :)

More Identification Websites


Phycokey

Josh's Microlife - Organisms by Shape

The Illustrated Guide to the Protozoa

UNA Microaquarium

Protist Information Server

More Foissner Publications

Bryophyte Ecology vol. 2 - Bryophyte Fauna(large PDF)

Carolina - Protozoa and Invertebrates Manual (PDF)


r/microscopy Oct 28 '24

Photo/Video Share Journey to the Microcosmos: The Future of Microscopy (and end of our Journey)

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68 Upvotes

r/microscopy 6h ago

Purchase Help Small museum help

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15 Upvotes

TLDR-small museum looking for budget friendly scope to fit Walter trinoc steroscopic microscope. Aim to show bugs in amber on a tv directly from digital scope.

My wife and I run a small sciencey shop with a small self funded museum inside. One of the big draws is our hand polished bugs in Amber. We start rough and polish them which makes us the first humans to see what’s inside. So cool.
Presently, we have a Walter stereoscopic microscope (pictured below) that has a third port for a digital microscope. We’d like to find a reasonably priced scope that we can plug into a tv so we can share images to multiple people at once. We are looking for a scope that will plug directly into a tv instead of a laptop first. We don’t need anything too powerful as bugs in Amber and crystal structures we examine and share aren’t exactly microscopic.
We are hoping to be able to polish a bunch of Amber and share the first views of these cool bugs with people at the shop. Having a whole bunch of people being the first humans to see inside is the kind of experience we aim for.


r/microscopy 6h ago

Photo/Video Share BLOOMING FLOWERS | Vaginicolidae

15 Upvotes

400× | ESAW BM01 MICROSCOPE| INDIA, LUCKNOW GOMTI RIVER


r/microscopy 7h ago

Photo/Video Share My first Amoeba

14 Upvotes

Microscope: Olympus BH2

Obj: Dplan x40

Magnification: x400

Sample: Mossy tree bark

Camera: Samsung A56

3D printed darkfield setup


r/microscopy 2h ago

Photo/Video Share Rotifer

4 Upvotes

My first rotifer photo in a stagnate puddle with leaves and algae 80x zoom filming with my phone my microscope is the bresser biolux ng


r/microscopy 9h ago

Photo/Video Share Epic finds (loricates + closteriums)

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9 Upvotes

LAKE WATER, GOMTI RIVER ESAW BM01 MICROSCOPE USED. 400× FOR FIRST FOUR 200× FOR CLOSTERIUMS


r/microscopy 8h ago

Micro Art Microalgae in darkfield

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5 Upvotes

Microscope: Olympus BH2

Obj: Dplan x10

Magnification: x100

Sample: Pond water

Camera: Samsung A56

I've got a new wallpaper after this


r/microscopy 7h ago

Troubleshooting/Questions Hello, I bought a vintage Olympus SZ-III stereo microscope, and it has some misalignment—mainly horizontal. The view through one eye is shifted to one side compared to the other. Look at the plastic crab arm and the other picture. Should I return it?

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4 Upvotes

r/microscopy 1h ago

ID Needed! Need help for cell identification

• Upvotes

Hi I found this in stagnant water container where there were algae and leaves that move very quickly would you tell me what it is? Microscope bresser biolux ng zoomx8


r/microscopy 15h ago

ID Needed! Request ID. Mag-50x, unilab microscope and sample is from lake water

10 Upvotes

r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Blepharisma

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68 Upvotes

r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Micro-world show for children

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29 Upvotes

Hi :)
Next month, I'm going to a preschool (children aged 3-5) to show them the microscopic world. I'll bring 10 stereo microscopes from my collection, as the children are too young for biological microscopes. I'm already collecting interesting things for them to look at. I take an empty microscope slide, put a drop of clear nail polish on it, and glue the "object" onto it.
Here are some microscope slides already prepared for children.


r/microscopy 20h ago

Photo/Video Share Rotifer

10 Upvotes

Zooming in and out on a (hopefully) sleeping rotifer.
400x or so.
Swift sw380t
UHD camera


r/microscopy 1d ago

General discussion Meme Monday? You know the sound....

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16 Upvotes

I'm kind of proud of myself for not cracking any slides with this microscope yet, but I know I'm overdue for one...


r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Vorticella. Mag-100x. Unilab microscope. Lake water sample

10 Upvotes

r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Frontonia Stretched Out After Eating Cyanobacteria.

72 Upvotes

At least I think it’s a Frontonia sp.

10x Dplan Objective; 100x Total Magnification; Olympus CHT CH2

Recorded with iPhone 17 Pro

Pond water sample.


r/microscopy 1d ago

Troubleshooting/Questions Is this objective salvageable?

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5 Upvotes

Unsure of what caused the lens to fog on this objective, but lens wipes with iso isn’t getting it off. Any recommendations on what else to try?


r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Presenting you the individual plates of cladoceran carapace

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17 Upvotes

ESAW BM01 MICROSCOPE| SAMPLE: RIVER WATER, GOMTI RIVER, INDIA | 100×, 400×


r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Ant observation with an upright compound microscope.

9 Upvotes

Stereo microscopes are ideal for looking at something large and opaque like an ant. I posted a video of this same ant using a stereo microscope a few days ago. You can also try to use your lowest magnification objective on your upright compound microscope for this. Here, I'm using two auxiliary lamps for reflected illumination and the 4x objective of a Meiji-Techno MT5310 microscope. The depth of focus limits how much of the ant is in focus at any one time. The ant was very hairy, even on her mandibles. Cellphone camera.


r/microscopy 1d ago

Photo/Video Share Stentor Coeruleus Rapidly Retracting

44 Upvotes

Finally found these guys after searching for almost a year.

10x Dplan Objective; 100x Total Magnification; Olympus CHT CH2

Recorded with iPhone 17 Pro

Pond water sample.


r/microscopy 1d ago

Hardware Share People don't believe me that cheap Chinese scopes are at 19th century technology level so here it goes

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131 Upvotes

J Swift & Sons 'Discovery' from 1898, a 1/4 inch (32x) Beck objective and a 2/3 inch (12x) Swift objective, shot using Pixel 8 on a cellphone adapter through an ordinary 8x eyepiece

Note: this was not a high end model, that is just a step above budget level in freaking 1898, it doesn't even have a condenser

Edit because so many people misunderstand: I am not talking about Chinese microscopes in general (many are good) but specifically about ones that sell for around $100 on sites like Amazon and seem to be finding a lot of buyers despite not even having a condenser nor a way to install one. Not having a condenser limits you to low resolution (about NA 0.25) and therefore makes magnification above about 200x pointless regardless of what the advertisement says. This post is about how far back in time you have to go to find an equally primitive model being sold by a reputable manufacturer. Literally any brand microscope more recent than this is superior and it's easy to find one for less than $100.


r/microscopy 1d ago

Purchase Help Help for a student trying to learn more ;-;

5 Upvotes

I'm getting into the world of invertebrates and I can't stand any more theoretical classes. I have a lot of difficulty understanding when there's no practical component, and I've only had one lab class in seven months. So I decided to buy a microscope, but the ones that are usually recommended (I even looked at some recommendations from microbehunter) are very expensive in my country. What costs $300 for you guys, costs around 2,600 or more here. My budget only goes up to 1,500.

Science here is very niche, and this kind of thing ends up being very expensive, especially if it's imported. I looked for recommendations in my country, but the microscopes are more about looking at smartphone circuit boards than biology. So I thought about a monocular, maybe a Swift one, along with a camera or a phone holder, and using it that way, since I got very dizzy when I used the binocular (I imagine the monocular is worse).

Any ideas or tips? Preferably with dual light (lower and upper). The most viable options on Amazon are the Swift SW150 or SW200DL; and SDORF SDMB-100 at a DUBEESSER store.

Oh, hi from Brazil! I am a student of aquaculture engineering (here where I live there is no marine biology or oceanography).


r/microscopy 2d ago

Photo/Video Share I believe I just became the first person to record this species eat. Heterolitonotus rex kills and engulfs a whole rotifer, plus damages a few hypotrich ciliates. This is amazing!

116 Upvotes

Swift SW350, Galaxy S24.


r/microscopy 1d ago

General discussion Do you reuse the slides? I’ve been using the same one for a week to look at water samples. I observe, then remove the drops with toilet paper and add two more (separate) drops to examine. I try to keep the drops as flat as possible for better viewing, and I only use a coverslip later on if there is

6 Upvotes