What is on the back of this gnat?

mortenoen · Post by **mortenoen** » Thu Mar 23, 2017 6:42 am

Hi,
This is another one of my amber inclusions (Baltic Amber, mid-Eocene period I think because of Stellate Trichomes in the piece). When stacking my image I found there is a strange little bug on the back of this gnat. First I thought it was a parasite, but I have never heard of such a creature, and could not find it on the net. So I took another picture (of very poor quality, I'm afraid), but the bug is lokated behind the nematoceras wings, and I had to find a very steep angle through the amber. But the more I look at it, the bug looks like a little dog, maybe he is living of som fungus on the gnats back? Or is it just a coinsidence?
Shot with Pentax Q7 and 50mm macro, stack of 100 images.

mortenoen · Post by **mortenoen** » Thu Mar 23, 2017 6:51 am

And here is the very poorly shot through the wings of the gnat. Pentax Q7 and Olympus 10x objective. I estimate the nematocera to be 2mm long, and this passenger to be no more than 0,5mm long.

And a slightly better version of the first one:

MarkSturtevant · Post by **MarkSturtevant** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 8:10 am

No idea. But it could be a mite, and so this could be a case of parasitism, or phoresy (where a mite hitches a ride on the larger animal), or just a coincidence. If you feel up to it, you could grind the amber down on the side where the mystery critter is to get a better view.

mortenoen · Post by **mortenoen** » Sat Mar 25, 2017 9:32 am

Thanks Mark!

I was thinking of grinding the amber further, but it's very fragile and has allready cracked once, and the mite, let us call it that, is covered by a ving on the other side too. I will do some further research, but by observation it does not look like it has evil on its mind