Cercaria stage of trematode?

TonyB · Post by **TonyB** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:46 pm

Hi, my first post so I hope that you find it of interest. The film quality is a bit amateurish but I was taking the site's name at face value - whereas I think that all the other pictures posted on the site are the best that I have seen. Thanks to everyone for the hours of fun and amazement I have had looking at the posts.

I found this organism in a sample I took from a swampy field near to where I work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwNcr7P5 ... tube_gdata

Searching images on the web the closest I could find was the cercaria stage of a trematode flat worm (many sites that detail the interesting and frightening life cycle of this animal). If anyone can confirm my attempt at identification and has any idea what the primary host is I would greatly appreciate it. I am hoping that the host is not human

.

There were a couple of snails in the sample and I suspect that at least one of them could have been infected due to the number of the cercaria that were present in the sample. Most were moving very fast but there were a few that looked dead and a couple that stayed still long enough for me to get some film of them.

Hope that the subject is of interest to some of you and that you do not find the video quality too poor.

Planapo · Post by **Planapo** » Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:51 pm

Tony, welcome aboard!

And thanks for sharing your 'nice' find. Yes it's a cercaria, one of the larval stages of a trematode, no doubt.

Could be of a trematode that has water fowl as final host. Search with google for "swimmer's itch". That's why I prefer not to go swimming in our lakes, but rather only in the sea.

--Betty

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:11 am

Nice video quality. Could be brighter, but it was clear and sharp.

What a nasty looking thing. I'm glad I have not found any here.

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:56 pm

Tony,

Welcome!

That is really one creepy looking creature. Fascinating. Never seen anything quite like it before.

TonyB · Post by **TonyB** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 1:08 pm

Hi Planapo - thanks for the ID confirmation. Lets hope that there are no cases of microscopist itch.

Mitch -thanks for the feedback - I agree that the brightness of the background is particularly disappointing - image from the scope is bright but at the moment the camera seems to reproduce it as quite dark and dull - any tips to improve the image would be greatly appreciated.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 1:18 pm

any tips to improve the image would be greatly appreciated.

I have a rather modestly priced program that I have used for about 8 years to edit video files. It's called Magix Movie Edit Pro. I think it's up to version 17 now and costs about $60. It can do everything I have ever wanted to do, including brightness, contrast, sharpen, exposure and hue and saturation. I have used it many time to increase brightness, and it does a pretty good job.

If your going to make a lot of videos and no money to burn, give it a try. It's pretty easy to learn and the mail version, opposed to download, comes with a nice thick manual.