An Ostracod In His Shell - Video

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 3:47 am

At first, I thought this was some kind of an egg of a worm or other microbe. As it turns out, it is an Ostracod in his shell. I had found an abandoned shell several weeks ago while looking through a drop of water on a slide and it looked exactly like a miniature empty river clam shell. Now I believe it was from one of these.

If you watch closely, you can see his antenna and feet extend outside the shell that he has opened partially. Apparently he is able to open and close the shell but not leave it.

Here's the video of the shell.

I just processed some stills I took during the recording of this video. Added below.

Franz Neidl · Post by **Franz Neidl** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 3:56 am

Hallo Mitch,

this is an Ostracod (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracod )

Franz

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 4:08 am

Hi Franz, and thanks for the ID. So this guy will never leave his shell? He is a very interesting fellow. I [mistakenly] thought his shell was just temporary, since I did find an empty one several weeks ago.

I will change the title.

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 9:18 am

Mitch,

Also commonly called "seed shrimp". You'll see a lot of these. Sometimes a sample gets so full of these they become a nuisance.... sort of like the nematodes.

On a few of your more recent posts I've noticed that the the left side appears to be darker than the center and right. If they were done with regular brightfield it should be more even. (At least left-to-right, sometimes the center is a little brighter). I don't know if your microscope has an adjustable bulb socket. If so, you might want to dig out the instruction manual and double-check it's position. (And also double-check that the condenser is properly centered as well).

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Wed Dec 15, 2010 11:30 am

Thanks for the information Charles. Other than the empty shell from a few weeks ago, this is the first one I have seen. I got it from a sample in a petri dish I have, of some moss with water in it. Kind of wonder where he came from when the sample was taken from the middle of the woods. LOL

This morning though, since that sample has been so productive, I took it out with some tweezers and swished it around in my new aquarium tank to add to the stuff already there.

I think that dark side is from the way I mounted the extension tubes. It started out as a test, but I have not made it more permenant yet, in hopes that new 20X Plan APO would finally get here. I was going to make some changes then, but have been putting it off. So as it stands, the twin kenko extenders on top of the trinocular tube are held on by black electrical tape, and it is slowly creeping to one side.

fpelectronica · Post by **fpelectronica** » Thu Dec 16, 2010 10:12 am

Nice video
It appears that your Nikon Fluophot is starting to work well
Francisco

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Thu Dec 16, 2010 10:19 am

Thanks Francisco. And today, I have a new addition to my lens family. My Nikon 20x Plan Apo finally arrived. I have yet to do any serious tests with it, but it has answered the question of why I was seeing all that green in my images.