Kittonia elaborata - interesting details

[Beatsy]

Hello all,

I recently found a complete Kittonia elaborata which I mounted in Darax and photographed. The first attached image is an 80-image focus stack shot with a 40x/0.75 objective under brightfield illumination. The 2nd image is a crossed-eyes stereo from the same data.

Notice how the ocelli on stalks show rings of (poorly resolved) pores radiating from the centre and the surface of the valve appears to be full of holes. I decided to take a closer look and repeated the stack with 100x/1.4 objective and brightfield illumination using 365nm UV light (3rd image). Not a "pretty" picture, but a lot more detail was revealed.

The pores on the faces of the ocelli are actually in linear rows (4th image - a 100% crop from the 3rd). They were invisible to the 40x lens which captured radiating pores on the backs of the ocelli instead.

Those empty "holes" in the frustule surface also turned into structured pores (5th image - 100% crop from the 3rd). Here's a colour REM image of them (not mine)

https://www.ultrastruktur.bio.lmu.de/de/forschung/rem1/rem/diatomee_marin.html

Although the optical image is *much* lower resolution, the general structure has been resolved. I'm pleased with that.

Overall, a very satisfying little project!

Cheers
Beats

[purkinje]

Hello Beats,

Not a "pretty" picture

you are kidding! Just great!
Cheers Stefan

[Jürgen Boschert]

Hi Beats,

what a wonderful post with lots of information and decent photographs especially the stereo and the high resolution "ugly ducks".

Thanks a lot!

[Siegfried]

Hi Beats
Your photos of the Kittonia Elaborata are by far much better than mine. I bow to your skill.
Greetings from Siegfried