One of these days, I’ll treat myself to a proper camera attachment for my microscope. In the meantime, here’s what we can achieve by pointing the iPhone at one of the oculars.
And a movie:
Here’s the little guy at a higher magnification:
Ain’t that just purty?
(Captured from a new pond in Russia Dock Woodlands. There was also lots of Spirogyra in the sample, although I was careful not to take any of the more macroscopic beasties, such as water boatmen.)
Nice-looking Daphnia you have there. If you could get a dozen or so, the WFleabase guys could probably do the genome for you…
Because that’s exactly what my life needs right now…
The amazing thing is that not too long ago, freshwater ecologists would have drooled over this kind of footage…
Yeah, that’s quite a thought, Steffi.
Even now, entirely new forms of life are being found in English ponds.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7350/full/nature09984.html
Cool!
lovely little Daphnia indeed. Even I know that one… pond life..
I’ve used Daphnia these last few years to run undergraduate research projects, and school outreach stuff, and most recently undergrad pharmacology practical classes. We usually measure their heart rate, since you can see the heart through the carapace. (It’s actually near what you would probably call the animal’s ‘back’, if you look carefully at RPG’s film, but you have to look hard as the heart wall is so thin that the heart is nearly transparent). You can measure other stuff too, like beat rate of the ‘antennae’ and even pulsations of the gut.
I even got as far as trogging through the Daphnia genome looking at the ion channel and transporter genes, but never got as far as finishing it properly or publishing anything. Though those who know me would probably have guessed that bit…
Very nice indeed… not helping my long-standing desire to get a scope and a T-mount one bit. 🙂
I like how it sits there for a bit and then starts breakdancing. 😀
@Austin ‘I’ve used Daphnia these last few years to run undergraduate research projects, and school outreach stuff, and most recently undergrad pharmacology practical classes’
I guess they are cheaper and less liable to snigger behind your back than grad students or postdocs.
Dead right Henry. No backchat from micro-crustaceans… and no need to reward them with anything other than a little bit of algae once in a while.