Guest
A drop of pond water observed with a dry darkfield condenser and a 4X objective. I played around with microscopes as a teenager in the 1950s and recently bought a microscope to tinker around with. I've enjoyed watching the little critters in pond water over the past two weeks and hope to do a few more videos as I learn to use the scope and the camera. By the way, the water flea is NOT a Daphnia, as it is labeled in the video. The animal shown is a Cladocera, but not a Daphnia. Daphnia is the genus of a very common water flea, but larger and planktonic in habit. The one in the video belongs to Family Chydoridae, small-sized and with its head terminating in a long and acute “beak“. In contrast to usual planktonic “free swimming“ water fleas, these Chydorids spend most of their lives within the superficial layer of bottom material and dead leaves, sifting for food particles. And that is exactly what they are doing in the video. The cyclic movement seen in their “belly“ side of body is the paddling action of t
