fungus trapped C. elegans worm

Life in the Nature: the fungus made traps and caught a worm by the tail for breakfast. That's right, the fungus eats the worm, and not vice versa. 

This is a movie of a carnivorous fungus A. dactyloides that traps and eats nematodes. This fungus makes many circular ring traps in response to the presence of C. elegans worms. When the worm enters the ring, the ring rapidly constricts to trap the  worm so that it cannot move away. The fungus will then send in hyphae that will kill and eat the worm from the inside.

The movie was obtained with a polychromatic polarizing microscope that shows the polychromatic birefringent image with hue corresponding to the slow axis orientation. More information about the microscopy that produced this image can be found in the Scientific Reports paper “Polychromatic Polarization Microscope: Bringing Colors to a Colorless World” by Shribak.

The size of the picture is 0.7mm x 0.9mm.