Mosquito Larva

[Charles Krebs]

It's always interesting for me to see the internal muscles and structures that show up when crossed polarizers are used. I loaded an eyedropper with some water from a nearly dried up birdbath and it was full of mosquito and midge larvae.


The shot below is an overall of one of the specimens on the slide. The white sections that look a little like stretched rubber bands are muscles that are hard to see in "normal" light.
4X S Plan Apo, 2.5X NFK eyepiece, 1.25X intermediate mag. Canon Rebel XT. 8 frames stacked with HFv4




The image below is of the head of a specimen. The muscle fiber is quite interesting in this view.
10X D Apo, 2.5X NFK eyepiece, 1.25X intermediate mag. Canon Rebel XT. 21 frames stacked with HFv4




This last image takes a little explaining. We are looking "into" the body of this larva at a fairly high magnification. The golden colored "tubing" is for air, and it runs directly to the breathing tube. (There are two air tubes that start at the end of the snorkel and run the length of the body with branches at various locations). The white colored muscle fiber can also be seen nicely here. It is connected to the interior surface of the (relatively) clear body tube of the abdomen.
40X S Plan Apo, 2.5X NFK eyepiece, 1.25X intermediate mag. Canon Rebel XT. 11 frames stacked with HFv4

[crocoite]

Wow Charles! Spectacular images, particularly the second one.

[Ken Ramos]

Fantastic images Charlie, you really got into some detail in that last one especially but of course all of them show great details.