Oct 6-7, 2012
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At this point temperatures had started freezing at night, and there were only dried fragments of cattails left around this marsh. In the shallows these were surrounded by clumps of loose brownish debris, held together by some stringy algae. Here and there were some duckweeds with roots and a few insects, snails, and amphipods.
The water was visibly teeming with small crustaceans, mainly larger Simocephalus and smaller ostracods and cyclopoids. There were also a number of naidid worms around the duckweed, and some midge larvae, many more of which emerged from the muck during the night as it warmed and lost oxygen.
The filaments proved to be a mix of branched green algae and greenish cyanobacteria, along with some Vaucheria and others. There was also a wide variety of diatoms and ciliates. The most common of the latter were Loxodes and armophoreans typical of anoxic water, plus Urocentrum, vorticellids, and smaller oval kinds.
↬ Thanks to zoologist Dr. Alexander Kostenko for the identification of Strongylostoma, to protistologist Dr. Ferry Siemensma for the identification of Netzelia corona, and to phycologist Roman Romanov for the identification of Epithemia.
