Tetrahymena is a genus of free-living ciliates, a freshwater organism that can inhabit lakes, streams, and ponds and can be found almost everywhere and in a variety of climates and their main food source is bacteria. Tetrahymena were selected in this experiment to study food vacuole appearance. This was done by taking 5 samples of cells: one immediately when the India ink was added, 10, 20, 30, and one at 40 minutes. Samples were taken in small test tubes, and inside a mixture of 100 µL sample of the Tetrahymena and India Ink and 20 µL of dilute glutaraldehyde to fix the cells was added at each interval of time. After all of the samples were taken, they were studied under a microscope at the 10X objective, then the number of marked vacuoles formed for ten different cells were recorded for each of the time intervals, then graphed. Tetrahymena feed by the process of phagocytosis, where is the engulfing of other cells or particles. Phagocytosis can be quantitated by counting the number of vacuoles that form in a defined time period.
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