Tunicate egg

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 12:45 pm

Franz showed a nice larva of a Nermertine worm. One of the nice things of marine plankton is that it is a brood chamber of many organims. This is the egg of a tunicate, Ciona I think, with an embryo inside. The tad pole shape can already be seen.

Wim

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:57 pm

Amazing, Wim. Wonderful work as always.
In my opinion would also fit as Nikon Small World material...

Franz Neidl · Post by **Franz Neidl** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:05 pm

Wim, I am enchanted with this photo.
Congratulation!

Franz

P.S.: What kind of illumination did you use?

Pau · Post by **Pau** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:33 pm

Wow!
Not only a magnifcient image but a powerful exemple of a most important concept in evolutionary Biology:
Tunicates are classified toghether with vertebrates in the Chordata phyllum despite its highly different adult anatomy because the dorsal cord present in its embryos and larvae and lost in its adults (but present in us as vertebral column and spinal chord).
It's by far the best real image I ever seen showing it!.
I plan (with your permission

) to show it to my students.

myriophyllum · Post by **myriophyllum** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:34 pm

Hi Wim,

wow, great photo!

Greetings

Jens

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:37 pm

An amazing image Wim. Is that also a second egg behind it?

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:45 pm

Wonderful picture!

I would like to know more details about how it was done.

Rogelio

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 4:27 am

Thanks for all the kind commends. It was just an image from the archive. I have some new images but I still have to sort them out.

It is taken with DIC, I think with a 10X neoflar. I use a small piece of plastic to create a little bit of colour in the background. A light blue makes it look a bit like the sea. The rest is a matter of creating a good slide. I examine my samples under the stereomicroscope and pick out interesting subjects and deposit them on a slide with clean water, often from the upper water region of the petri dish I use. If you pick up too much detritus you can release the organism again in this upper region and catch it again without the detritus.

Wim

Cactusdave · Post by **Cactusdave** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:21 pm

Very nice Wim, and that tip for getting subjects without detritus is useful, thanks.

Tunicate egg

Tunicate egg

Great!