These are very short but high resolution video clips filmed with an Olympus inverted microscope equipped with DIC optics and a DP71 camera. These videos are also on You Tube.

Dinoflagellate movies:

Ceratium showing off their flagella

Ceratium platycorne


Ceratium tripos

Gyrodinium spiralis spiraling

Balechina coerulea (Gymnodinium coeruleum)

Tintinnid movies


Cyttarocylis swimming (feather-like cilia)



Cyttarocylis stuck on the surface


Codonellopsis orthoceras 1

Codonellopsis orthoceras 2




Codonellopsis morchella


Eutintinnus inquilinus trying to feed

Attached tintinnids- Detritus Gang

Detritus Gang (Eutintinnus inquilinus) The film shows several tintinnids and a vorticellid ciliate attached to a detritral particle. This particular tintinnid species is unusual in that it is often found attached to something (diatoms, detritus...). The specimens are from a culture started by Fabien Lombard.

Radiolaria and Foraminifera movies

A radiolarian, Protocystis xiphodon, showing a what looks like a feeding tube.


Lithoptera fenestrata - focusing through the skeleton to show the complicated 3-D structure


A globigerid foram slowly passing through the field of view


Colonial ciliate (vorticellid, Zoothamnium sp) movie

The film shows a colonial ciliate (Zoothamnium sp.) expanding and contracting. The cells are feeding when the colony is extended and the entire colony contracts as one when disturbed. In the film the colony contracts whenever a copepod comes too close or touches a cell. The colony is from the Bay of Vilefranche in Feb 2012.


Sticholonche zanclea (Taxopodia) swiming using its axopodes as paddles

This short film show how fast this odd creature from the Bay of Villefranche can swim