Plate tectonics - a snail's perspective

[Bruce Williams]

Hi folks,

If you haven't already seen my "Land Snail's Eggs" posting in the Macro Forum, please do check it out to get background info.

Well I snaffled 18 eggs (leaving a similar number) whilst walking my dog this afternoon. I am hoping to see at least one egg through to hatching and beyond. So hopefully this is the first of a series of pics. I tried using transmitted light but there is no internal detail to be seen as yet. This reflected light, Mieji image is about 90% of the full frame (reduced to 800x600) with just the edges trimmed off to remove stacking distortion (16 frames using CombineZ5).

You can see a small section of shell has broken off at about 8 o'clock.

Note: I did consider posting a very much closer image (full size crop) but actually there's not that much more "interesting" detail to be seen at this stage.

Bruce

[Ken Ramos]

A very interesting image here Bruce. I was kind of thinking that you might give us a closer look at them. I have my fingers crossed for you, do you or have you found out anything as far as incubation times, conditions required and such? I cannot help but to wonder what we will see, a snail as we often see them, though very much smaller or something entirely unexpected, like will there already be a soft but visible shell yet to harden or will there not be? Maybe a supply of calcium might be in order just in case.

Thanks Bruce

[rjlittlefield]

Bruce, this is excellent detail on an interesting subject. The lighting really brings out the different textures of the layers of the shell! I'll be interested to see how this thing develops.

The bit of shell that's broken off and lying on the plant stem looks oddly blurred, with no texture and fuzzy edges except for the very front of it. I'd think that it's positioned at the very back of the stack, so that most of it is OOF, but then I'm confused because it looks like the right backmost corner is sharp, and behind that there's even another highlight that's pretty sharp too.

Is the blurred appearance something going on with the stacking, or does that piece look the same way in individual frames?

--Rik

[Bruce Williams]

Ken - I have been doing a bit of reading since posting this image and will probably split the group into 2 lots, keeping half on the soil/moss that I brought from the nest site and putting the rest onto damp cotton. If I manage to hatch any, then yes you are absolutely they will require a good supply of calcium and will be fed on lettus.

I'm a bit worried about the cracked shell on the egg in the image - I would say about a third have cracked shells and the rest are intact. We'll just have to wait and see how things develop.

Rik - unfortunately I didn't keep the original frames as I'm very short on disk space at the moment. I'm going to buy a 320 Gb external disk drive this week and that should solve my disk space problems - for a while. However, in this instance I only shot 2 or 3 frames after I knew for sure that the egg itself was completely in focus. I take the view that (generally speaking) an out of focus background helps focus attention on the main subject. So I don't know - the fragment is just about borderline...

Bruce

[beetleman]

I think we are in for some exciting follow-up here folks. I guess the worst that could happen is the eggs will fungus over and the best will be the recorded birth of a baby land snail. You did a super job on this photo Bruce, Very 3D looking.

[Bruce Williams]

Rik - Re. your mushy stacking question: It turns out that I still had the original frames in the Recycle Bin. So I have posted some comparison shots in the Technique and Technical Discussion Forum.

Doug - Thanks for your support on my endeavour. If one makes it to snailhood you can be the godfather

Bruce