The video, filmed under a microscope, shows microscopic algae spread virtually everywhere. Mr. Koch caught them in a small lake by passing a plankton net into the first 50 cm of water. “I didn’t grow it, the microbes are very dense in the picture just because they were concentrated by the net,” he explained to me in an email exchange.

All species seen in the movie are frequent inhabitants of freshwater bodies. The types of “flowers” that turn on themselves are actually colonies of algae called Sinoforese. Koch explains that all of these cells have flagella (a type of “fin”) that point outward and typically allow “the colony to move by rolling over or landing in its natural habitat.” But in the video, it’s spinning around because the way it’s placed on the microscope slide prevents it from moving freely.”

Many of the brown and red “spheres” that come and go throughout the picture are from their side traclomonas, microbes with flagella that allow movement and in which most species are capable of photosynthesis (eg plants).

The doctoral student also notes some other “actors” who appeared in his film, including microscopic algae called euglena Entering the image from the right side at 0:04 and colony dinoprion (Sort of a semi-transparent “branch” that we see at the bottom of the screen from the beginning of the video.) “These are all very common types of plankton in lakes and ponds,” says Koch, who posted the video. On his Twitter feed this spring.