An unexpected development

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CrispyBee
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An unexpected development

Post by CrispyBee »

It's been several months that I've made an experimental 'aquarium' with microorganisms like daphnia, cyclops and ostracods - at first I found two newt larvae that were accidentally introduced with some plant material and they wreaked havoc on the daphnia, basically eating all of them up.

After I brought the newt larvae back to the pond from which the plants came from I thought the larger microorganisms would bounce back...but they didn't. And now I think I know why - there were three damselfly larvae which continued to feast on everything that moved. One of them died and I didn't see the other two for some time, so I thought they were gone as well...

Guess who crawled out of the water today on Jan. 4th 2025 at 8pm when it's -2°C outside and there are no other insects in sight for months to come....

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some details:

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Of course this wasn't planned and I had to act quickly - once they are done they are ready to fly and catching them would be very difficult. So I just used two LED panels as a light source and the Sony A6700 with the Sigma 150mm with a polariser, using the auto-focus bracketing feature (which worked really well).
Using a rail would have been far too slow, the damselfly was starting to get real active.

Sadly as there's no food source, no place to hide and hibernate (it would become an instant damsicle) I had to put her in a killjar, she/he never stood a chance emerging at this time of the year :cry:

Marcepstein
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by Marcepstein »

Nice images, what species of newt? Any images of it?

CrispyBee
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by CrispyBee »

Haha yeah it was the European newt, also known as 'Smooth newt' - Lissotriton vulgaris.

Here are some photos of the little rascals:

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I was planning on taking some better photos of them in a petri dish but didn't want to subject them to any more stress than absolutely necessary.

But as you can see by their orange belly they are full of nice big daphnia.

CrispyBee
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by CrispyBee »

I think it took about 20 attempts to get a full body stack with the damselfly but here it is:

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During the stack the insides of the second segment (S2 or A2) was moving, probably still working on "straightening everything out and pumping liquid into the wings and all around. There are some bits on S2/A2 visible so this is probably a male(?) - not 100% sure, I know next to nothing about the specifics of damselfly anatomy.

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Sym P. le
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by Sym P. le »

It's always nice to have some good equipment handy when interrupted by a surprise.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Wow! Very impressive. Internal movements are pretty normal all the time though.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Sym P. le
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by Sym P. le »

Normal, but not normally captured in such detail by Joe/Jolene Public.

CrispyBee
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by CrispyBee »

Well that's mostly due to the incredible coincidence of having this damselfly emerge in my apartment - basically right next to my photo-setup and only days after I got the whole auto-focus-bracketing to work and ironing out the last kinks just hours before. That made it possible to get the stacks and observe these movements in such detail, so it's mainly a combination of technological advances and sheer luck but still very interesting to see.

The downside of course was that this "pumping" movement also resulted in slight movements of the whole segmented region.

I'm just a bit bummed that I didn't get the unfolding of the wings - it just happened too fast and that would have required better planning - as you can see I didn't even have a stick or twig ready, only a bamboo coffee stirrer :oops:

Marcepstein
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Re: An unexpected development

Post by Marcepstein »

Very interesting about Lissotriton vulgaris, similar to the habitat conditions of a few of our eastern newts, adults living in forests duff, nocturnal, migrating to ponds to breed and mature, then move back to uplands. Clearing and modifying these small wetlands, impacts both the newts and inverts. Wetland protection has changed over time, but also for the adults, modifying the uplands reduces their required habitat.

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