Gastrotrich eggs

[Charles Krebs]

Took these some time ago! Back in 2005 I "floated" a coverslip on a pond water sample for a couple of days to see what might attach to it. On examination it had a great many gastrotrich eggs placed together, something I had not seen before (or since).

I've been trying to re-organize and backup old files and came across these photographs. This was before I had DIC, so I used oblique brightfield, "circular" oblique, and darkfield to increase the contrast and see the subjects better. (I had posted the fourth image back in the old forum, but did not care for the "rendition" I made then. The other shots have not been posted before).

[Wim van Egmond]

Those are super, Charles,

When you have DIC it is tempting to neglect the other illumination techniques but if you want to have a varied series it is good to shoot with brightfield, phase and darkfield as well.

The floating coverslip is one of those tricks that always give surprising results. One of those tricks every microscopist should know.

I assume you also suffer from a large unexplored archive? Although I think you are better organised than I am. I always prefer the making of the images, the actual microscopy work better than the archiving and sorting out. One of the reasons why I don't post much.

Wim

[Planapo]

Charlie, amazing what you have achieved with oblique brightfield here. Hadn't you mentioned it, I would have believed that, except for the last one, these were DIC.

I love that first one especially for its composition. Reminds of one of the illustration plates of textbooks that go over one hole page, where animal, plus its various life stages plus parts of the habitat are shown. And that is all in one photo here!
Do you happen to remember whether that fragment of alga was inside the animal, or is it oof below or above. Just looked it up in a chapter on Gastrotricha and found that some do feed on algae.

--Betty