This is the largest, easiest to record, and most “colorful” paramecium-like thing I’ve ever seen.
A ciliate that resembles an Easter egg. This one was found in a natural pond intermittently connected to the Gatineau river by a culvert.
The colourful cytoplasm consists mainly of food vacuoles containing cyanobacteria in various phases of digestion. The cytostome (cell mouth) is supported by a cytopharyngeal basket composed of stiff microtubular rods (at the anterior right, from cell's perspective). The cell has numerous spindle-shaped trichocysts, visible here as short black lines.
A pond-edge water sample was taken on 3/19/2021 using a 10 micron dip net to enrich for microorganisms. Air temp. 46F