An adult female Cyclops from my microbe aquarium. The "aquarium" is a 3 gallon glass carboy from Walmart, with a heavy glass lid. It looks and probably was a large candy jar from the old style general store.
I made a rather long, 23 minute video of this beast, but have cut it down to 4 parts, for ease of uploading from my end and to cut down on the boredom on your end.
I have also satisfied those people who called for a full frame shot of one of these, and there are a couple still shots here and then the part 2 video shows more footage of her, full frame. The stills are cropped about 40%, to show more detail, but the video is uncropped, and does show the relative small size of these bugs. They are small.
Here are the links to the videos;
Part 1
covers the general look of the Cyclops, some of her internal parts and her pack of parasitic suctorians, which are an added bonus to the overall video.
Part 2 will take a closer look at her internal organs and her reproductive parts and musculature. And for those people calling for a full frame body shot, you will get your look at her whole body.
Part 3 will get a closer look at the internal organs at 40x, some of the musculature and her egg tubes and possibly the beginnings of egg sacs.
Part 4 will show a closer exploration of the lower body area, and possibly her forming egg sacs at 40x, an equivalent of 400x at the eyepiece.
1. 20x at the eyepiece.
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2. 40x at the eyyepiece.
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3. 100x at the eyepiece and showing just some of the attached suctorians. There is more coverage of these nasty thugs in the video.
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4. 100x at the eyepiece. The head and eye, and another suctorian.
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5. 100x at the eyepiece. This shot shows some of the muscle bundles that wag the tail, and both ovaducts, already with some eggs in them, headed for the to be developed eggsacs at the rear. I believe this is a second stage adult instar, with three more molts to go.
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6. 100x at the eyepiece. A view of the rear of the carapace, showing the division of two of the body plates, resembling midevil armor. This also shows more of the massive tail wagging muscle that attaches at the head and goes all the way to the split in the tail.
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7. 400x at the eyepiece. A closeup of the suctorians. They are passive predators. They sit and wait for microbes to come bumbling along, then when one touches a spine, it gets stuck, which triggers a digestive fluid to be released from the spines, digesting the hapless bug. The digestive fluid then travels down the spine to the main body, don't ask me how, where it is absorbed and digested. A slow death at best. You can see here, the well advanced digestion of a couple of microbes still stuck to the spines.
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