A surprisingly large chunk of our day to day work lives are spent patiently staring down a microscope, counting different taxa of testate amoebae, identifying different species of plant or searching (very often in vain) for tiny shards of volcanic ash, or tephra.  You can find out more about each of these methods on the methods pages of this website.  Whilst this task may seem rather dull and repetitive to the outsider it does give us access to some wonderful images, a hidden microscopic world in amongst out innocuous looking peat samples.  Best of all, using a microscope only seems to use the visual side of your brain, leaving our academic minds free to wander!

Hyalosphenia elegans, a species of testate amoeba

T – tephra, close up image of an individual tephra shard. Photo credit: Pete Langdon.

Cell structure of the moss, Sphagnum austinii

Follow the links to see more fascinating microphotographic images of peatland plants, testate amoebae and tephra.