ID microbe found in moss sample (USA) I found this microbe after putting a wet moss sample under my microscope. It latched on to a piece of moss and scanned the area around it for prey, and when it didn't find any, it slowly swam away. It's fairly large for a microbe, and it's rectangular with two big green spots. I'm not sure if the spots have any significance (I thought for a second it might be mitosis, but I'm not sure). Some pictures at 250x and 400x: ![Image 1]( ![Image 2]( ![Image 3]( Any information would be greatly appreciated!

I am not 100% sure on this, but it looks very like a diatom. These are a range of very diverse unicellular algae found world-wide in soil and water environments (salt and fresh). There are a huge number of species (also genera, families etc.).

The reasons I think that this is a diatom are that it has what appears to be a thick transparent wall (photos 2 and 3) and has a "cut in half" shape - where the word diatom comes from ( _dia_ divided, _tomos_ I cut). Diatoms are usually between 20 and 200 micrometres long, so 250-400x observation fits fairly well.

I think what you have here is a pennate diatom (see images under "classification"). Some pennate diatoms are motile

There's an image of one that resembles yours here (see second image)