more bugs — my own photos!

Another four hours benthic duty: 2:00 - 5:30 in the lab with Kay and Cheryl, plus a half hour printing more flyers for Kay to take to meeting tomorrow morning.

I took my camera and tried taking photos through the microscope. Todd was impressed at how well it worked, for such a simple-minded setup. It turns out that the ocular tube is just about the same diameter as my camera lens, so I just used a tube made of cardstock and tape to hold them in line.

The photo above is of the wonderful blackfly larvae antennae-fans, with which they screen food particles out of the water. Underneath the antennae are what I suppose are the mouthparts with which it cleans the food off of the fans, and below that, under its "chin," is the single proleg. Not the first pair of prolegs, the one proleg, right in the middle of the body — strange critter. Then you can see the hind end of another individual, with the circle of tiny hooks that help it hold on in the current while straining out food.

The very six-legged critter on the right is an almost-adult dragonfly, family Libellulidae of the order Odonata. Dragonflies are generally stout like this, while damselfly larvae tend to be long and skinny, with heads wider than their bodies, and three long gills for "tails." Most dragonfly larvae have this long extensible lower "lip" that shoots out from under their head for catching prey. Click on the photo for the full-size version, and you can just make out the hairs on the rim of the palps (the side parts) that are typical for libellulids. When the thing is closed up under the "chin" it looks kind of like a gas mask.