Hiking With A Field Microscope

Introduction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Secrets of a San Francisco Deck Garden

Giant Bacteria Found in Golden Gate Park Flowers...!

Cryptobiotic Soil Unearthed in Utah

Revealing Films of Life in a Cliff-side Seep

A Hard Life Out in the Salt Flats

Vernal Pool Fantasies

Relax in California Tide Pool

Salt Marsh Mysteries

The Big Heat

Beneath the Tufas in Mono Lake

What is a Field Microscope?

Getting Out Into the Field

Little-known Techniques of Field Photomicrography

Candid Camera

Hiking with a Field Microscope is a work in progress. It grew out of two articles I wrote for the British Internet magazine: Micscape. You can read those articles by looking for my name in the Micscape “Main Menu - Article library”.

ALSO SEE OUR HIDDEN ECOLOGIES WEB SITE. Hidden Ecologies is a component project of the San Francisco EXPLORATORIUM project Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim, funded by the NEA.

Originally, I intended this electronic book to be a brief manual for hikers who want to carry along a field microscope when they hike to interesting places. My ambition has now grown. I am also writing this electronic book because I intend to offer an adult course with the same title: Hiking with a Field Microscope. I expect to supply CD-ROM versions of this book for reference.

I have hiked with my field microscope in the arid canyons of Utah's Colorado Plateau, carried it to salt marshes along California's coast, even hiked in winter – skied cross-country, actually – to the hot springs of Yellowstone. As my experiences have widened and I have made contacts with other folks hiking with a field microscope, I have come to see the value of a web site where we can all post photomicrographs, describe experiences, ask questions, and answer questions. So now I am writing this electronic book as part of a web site because I think others may want to share some of their experiences, and may find it useful to exchange infomation.

Using a microscope in the field is just another way of seeing the world. Looking at the tiny world does not make much sense outside of the larger world of location, geology, and natural history. So, in the chapters to follow, you will find me providing GPS coordinates, talking about and providing references to the geological history of the location, describing the wildlife and local ecology, even mentioning the history of peoples in the area.

I will provide as much information as I can about field microscopes and field microscopy. I will share the resources I have found and suggest techniques that I have found useful. I invite any readers to share with me their experiences.

Each chapter consists of a single web page. In every chapter, LINKs are provided to other web sites of interest or as references. References to books or scientifc publications will be provided. At the end of each chapter I intend to develop a forum where others can submit photomicrographs, brief movies, or other information.

An example of three very important references are:

Dyer, Betsey Dexter [2003] A Field Guide To Bacteria. Comstock Publishing Associates, a division of Cornell University Press. 356-pp, Paperback, $26.

Patterson, D.J., with drawings by S. Hedley [2003] Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa - A Colour guide. ASM Press, 1752 N Street NW, Washington DC. 223-pp, Paperback [apparently plastic-coated].

Horner, Rita A. [2002] A Taxonomic Guide to Some Common Marine Phytoplankton. Biopress, Ltd., Bristol, England. 195-pp, Hardback, $30.21 {my copy was a gift from Eric Rehm, of the University of Washington.}

If you buy any book to use in Field Microscopy, you should buy Betsey's book. It covers bacteria by both environment and classification, it provides ideas for experiments, and the bacteria are the most difficult to identify. It is, as far as I know, the first true Natural History field guide to the bacteria. Patterson's beautifully-illustrated book is essential for understanding and identifying protozoa. Horner's book, equally beautifully illustrated, is also essential if you intend to sample in any salt water environment, from tide pools to salt marshes.

Please read the chapters on this web site as they are developed. Please e-mail me with your comments, your questions, and your criticisms.

No doubt, in its final form, this book will need a more conventional and “bookish” introduction. I suppose it should go something like this:

What is this book really about? If you are not already hiking with a field microscope, why should you bother reading it?

First, and foremost for the folks who are not microbiologists, this book is about the beauty and fascination of these tiny creatures we rarely see. Indeed, it was my use of a digital camera while hiking the Colorado Plateau in Utah that sparked the idea of this book. I have used as its front “cover” the photomicrograph that first brought the realization that my efforts had artistic values, as well as scientific values.

I was photographing the lovely golden diatom as it majestically sailed across the field and collided with a cyanobacterial chain, probably Anabaena. Wow! I had not expected the result. Knowing the scientific names of these creatures is not any prerequisite to appreciating their fragile grace, quirky movements, and subtle colors. Discovering that beauty, revealing it through your own efforts, is a necessary and sufficient reason for hiking with a field microscope.

The second reason, however, is more in line with why scientists do science. It is the mystery. How does a tiny speck of life survive, indeed, thrive in a hot spring at near boiling temerature? Seeing cells spring to life when water is added to a bone-dry powder of sand that has been alternatively freezing and baking in a 6,000-ft high depression in Navajo sandstone for months or years has the same mystery as the cosmic whisper of radiation from the “Big Bang”.

How surprised and stunned I was when I first examined the mud at the bottom of California's Mono Lake. Mono Lake is so alkaline that if you could bring yourself to drink a relatively modest quantity, you would die. Yet, in that mud, I found a rich community of rotifers, paramecia, diatoms, and water bears that looked no different from those in a nearby stream of pure mountain water. A simple experiment, however, showed that transferring the tiny creatures from the pure stream to a depression slide of Mono Lake water meant instant death for them.

The successful invasion of life into every environment under almost every condition on earth is a great mystery. Is this universal? Will we find tiny creatures on Mars? Under the ice of Jupiter's Io?

This mystery is another reason for hiking with a field microscope. With a microscope, we can ask: “Any life there...?” And, look to see. With a microscope in the field, you can become a life detective, looking in all the unlikely corners for clues to the great mystery.

So then, this book is to guide both those who seek the seldom-seen beauty and those who seek the mystery. Perhaps, indeed, they are both the same.