Friday, October 25, 2013

The wonderful world of biofilms!

Just recently I had the great pleasure of visiting Drs. Jill Welter and Paula Furey at St. Catherine University in the beautiful city of St. Paul, MN (not to be confused with Minneapolis, MN). On this trip (funded by the Montana Institute on Ecosystems) I received training in algal and cyanobacteria identification. With the skills I gained at St. Kate's I can now examine how temperature alters the structure of benthic communities. Below are photos of a few species that colonized the tiles in my experimental channels this past summer.



Anabaena - a nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria




Ulothrix - a green algae  



Meridion - a diatom



Rhopalodia - a nitrogen fixing diatom