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Summer 2003 Martin Microscope was invited to attend the 9th International Symposium on Tardigrada in St. Pete Beach, Florida.  We provided microscopes and digital cameras allowing researchers from around the world to share and photograph their slides, including two newly discovered species of tardigrades!  What's a tardigrade?  Here's a great website we found dedicated to tardigrades:   www.tardigrades.com.

Rare Ecuadorian Tardigrade under Phase Contrast - imaged with M71799PKG


Searching for water bears under the dissecting microscope.




A great time was had by all...
We had so much fun looking at and learning about waterbears that we couldn't wait to find one when we got home.  We gathered some moss from a pecan tree trunk, soaked it in water for 30 minutes, then squeezed out the wet moss into a cup.  Then we used a pipette to pull out some of the "stuff" that had settled to the bottom of the cup.  We placed this in a dish and examined it under a Meiji RZ stereomicroscope using semi-darkfield transmitted illumination.  There were lots of nematodes and rotifers, but finally we found what we were looking for!  We used the pipette to suck up the little critter and deposited it on a slide which we then examined under Differential Interference Contrast.  We took the following video using a Sony Mini-DV camcorder and our MM99 adapter: Tardigrade Video.mpg  (trimmed to 5 seconds)
 
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