Help identifying Zooplankton (RAK, UAE)
Posted by Cakeronii@reddit | marinebiology | View on Reddit | 5 comments
Hii,
I need help identifying these little guys. I’m practicing with quite an old sample before I work with an actual sample, so it’s all exuviae
No. 1 I’ve seen a lot of them throughout the sample, couldn’t figure out what it was at all
The rest as well, I had difficulty identifying because I couldn’t find them in the ID books given by my professor
Jkptr@reddit
Can’t give you exact ids as Im not familiar with your area. #3 is an annelid, specifically a polychaete as you can see the hairs (setae) developing
Jkptr@reddit
1 could be a foraminieran, egg case or possibly an encrusting annelid like Spiorbis
MoaraFig@reddit
Looks like a nematode resting cyst to me, but that's just a guess.
MoaraFig@reddit
Some advice to make things easier on your eyes. There's a lot of schmutz in your sample. If it's from collection, then agitating your sample by swishing water in and out of a transfer pipette can help things from clumping together. Always cover your dishes when not actively looking at them to protect them from micro plastics and other dust in the air. See if you can get dark field illumination for your microscope, it's much easier on the eyes and highlights the surface setae you need for id better. If you microscope has an iris, close it slightly. It'll give you a better depth of field.
1 looks like a resting egg of something. If it was in my sample, I wouldn't could it.
Looks like the head of an oikopleura. Is that an out of focus tail off to the right?
Is a polychaete larvae.
When I'm stuck on something, I flip through marine zooplankton of southern Britain https://www.wgimt.net/morphological/keys It's not for my region either, so the species don't fit, but it covers just about everything, for when I have no idea of phylum. I think the same people did a guide for the Red Sea, too though.
k_h_e_l@reddit
Could the first be some kind of freshwater centric diatom or a top-down view of a ciliate? It even could look like a small hydrozoan to me, if it's not just some algae. #2 looks a bit unclear but could even be a rotifer to me? #3 is really a guess but could be a polychaete larva or some other insect larva.