Exercise I. Draw Your Own Pfiesteria!

Step 1. How big is Pfiesteria?

The size of Pfiesteria is 5-450 Um (micrometers). Compare that with your ruler: 1 millimeter is 1000 micrometers. If the smallest Pfiesteria were lined up on your ruler, 200 of them would fit in 1 mm!

Step 2. What does Pfiesteria look like and what does it do?

Go to Web site 3: "Images of Pfiesteria"[broken] . This Web site contains a photographic perspective of the organism, as seen through microscopes.

As you can see, there are many different versions of Pfiesteria. This is because they can take on different forms depending on their particular life-cycle stage. They are in the flagellated, amoeboid, or encysted forms or stages.

Step 3. Make your own Pfiesteria.

Use the empty box on the Draw Your Own Pfiesteria worksheet below to draw a picture of Pfiesteria in one of its stages. Make sure you identify the stage. In your drawing, identify the features that correspond to the descriptive name of the lifestage, and label key features such as the flagella

Step 4. Figure out the scale of your drawing.

Measure the diameter of the Pfiesteria in your drawing using a ruler. Now compute the scale of your drawing with respect to a 'real' Pfiesteria.
(Hint: If the diameter of your Pfiesteria is 1 mm, then the scale would be 1:200)  

---

You may prefer to download and print a PDF Version (1 pp, 450K) of this worksheet.

Name: _________________________ Date: ________________

Name of Stage: _________________________

Scale of Drawing: _______________________

(Your Picture goes here.)

Additional Resources and activities (as time permits):

Middle Schools  |  Hysteria Over Pfiesteria  |  Exercises: I  |  II  |  III  |  IV  |  Top