| Beggiatoa Bacteria Love Rotten Eggs You may not like rotten-egg smell, actually hydrogen sulfide H2S, but Beggiatoa love it. They get their energy from using sunlight to oxydize hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur. They are photosynthetic gamma proteobacteria. They are long and skinny filaments. This shot was taken from a Heron's Head Park Salt Marsh pond sample, San Francisco Bay. A Swift FM-31 Field Microscope was used with a Sony DSC-W7 Cybershot Digital Camera. If you are wandering the salt marsh and you get the faint whiff of rotten eggs, you can be sure Beggiatoa are nearby. You can also be thankful - without Beggiatoa and their relatives, that faint whiff might be powerful enough to knock you down. If you look closely at these bacteria, you will see little golden sulfur particles in them. Tags: science ecology bacteria microscope pond salt marsh sulfide |