Jan 11th, 2022: Sample of Mom's Soil Compost & Observations of Worms
- Michelle Lin
- Jan 12, 2022
- 2 min read
After taking a week long refreshing vacation with family to Vegas, Nevada, I was once again longing to see microorganisms under my student compound microscope.
Having learned of my mom's rich soil compost filled with organic kitchen scraps, my mom kindly scooped up a small sample of her compost into a wee jar for me to enjoy. Excited, I poured in a little bit of distilled water from a distilled water jug my family had for other practical purposes.
The scientist in me decided to let the soil sit in the distilled water for about 2 days. After those two days, I then extracted a tiny amount of the sample using a glass pipette onto the glass side. Following the basic procedures for making a wet mount, I inserted my slide on the stage of the microscope, made sure it was securely attached, and then booted up Motic Images 3.0.
This was because Motic images 2.0 was having some unknown problems in regards to the "live capture" screen not showing.
As expected, there were a lot of soil debris. Focused, I searched around the slide until I encountered a cute little worm.

By all means, this worm has no eyes. Due to my fascination with microorganisms since 4th grade--I have a tendency to call everything I see under the microscope as a "cute little creature". That is, with the exception of water bugs or any other microscopic insect that I happen to see-- those make me shudder.
At x400 total magnification (x10 with eyepiece and x40 objective), seeing microscopic worms was new to me. To be entirely honest, I had observed another little worm during troubleshooting of Motic Images 2.0. It hated the bright light of my microscope, so I gave it some empathy and toned down the brightness of my microscope and light exposure.
Surprisingly, the worm's behavior become less erratic and returned to its "normal" searching for food attitude. While I am unsure of exactly how the worm navigates to their food source, I suspect is has to do with chemotaxis; as it mimicked the concept of chemotaxis described in my BIOL 315 (Principles of Microbiology class) textbook with bacteria.
Occasionally, when switching directions, the little worm would temporarily curl up into a circle, turn itself around, and then "wiggle swim" its way in the desired direction.

After 2 hours of observing this little worm, I found their bigger cousin--the soil nematode. Just like the smaller worm, they "wiggle swim" their way around except that it was much faster. Swishing the particles around them, the soil nematode slithered its way towards soil debris in search of food.

The only difference between the soil nematode and the smaller worm (for now I'll call it that), was that the soil nematode didn't need to temporarily curl up into a circle to change directions, it just simply slithered backwards and automatically regained its sense of direction without a thought.
The process of changing directions for a soil nematode was extremely quick, unlike the smaller worm that would occasionally hesitate every once in a while where it wanted to go.
Comments