The biggest critters are about 2 mm. (As this one was). Scale is a difficult thing with this type of microscopy, slide scopes often have micrometers built into one of the lenses but dissecting scopes do not. (And frankly, it's hard enough to get the thing positioned right, and have it not be carried away by the "current" of preservative, to take a photo - sticking a ruler under there would complicate things. I might have to try, though.)
Though, mainly, these are for decoration on the poster I will be presenting; the real information is the species diversity (well, actually, order diversity, because of identification challenges) and the patterns over the seasons. (The diversity is really low in this sample, but that's not surprising - it having been a cold, wet winter that had not really warmed up yet when I took the samples).
Springtails seem to be the most abundant things in the samples.
1 comment:
The camera software *might* have a computer-generated scale bar that you can add to the image--we've got that on our dissecting scope here. You just need to calibrate it to something first, so you do need a micrometer for a couple of minutes to set it up at whatever magnifications. But after that it should be able to pop it in automatically whenever you like.
(It'll depend on the camera software, obviously. But if it's a camera meant to be used with microscopes, I bet it'll have it somewhere.)
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