Cyclops Copepod

I picked up a couple of these ladies by accident the other day while trying to capture some diving beetles in the park (i caught 2 of those). It's been so rainy that a couple of gigantic puddles have appeared in tanbarky and leafy areas. Even after only a day, they were ripe with invertebrate life.

This gal is a Copepod, from the genus Cyclops, because of that red eye spot. The water droplet is about 4 mm across. She's also got a couple of egg sacs. They are crustaceans, and things like diving beetles and fish will eat them. I saw one paper when doing some quick research for this blog entry that suggests that they filtered diseases that might harm fish. The paper said that the cyclops would eat the actinospores, and the fish that consumed the copepods wouldn't contract the disease that they would from the lone actinospores. Pretty neat. When the camera is still, you can see the hundreds of even smaller organisms floating about in the droplet around the copepod. If anyone would like to buy me a light microscope so I can see what they are, please feel free. Xmas is right around the corner. Also, let that be a lesson to not drink out of puddles that might look clean. You might drink a trillion water fleas. I also managed to grab a lot of some kind of worm, but they didn't photograph well. Too shiny.

An aquatic entomology class was added for the winter term and I am very excited. However, if I take it, I probably won't have time to take botany as well. I have to take botany for some other classes. If I kept them both, I would have a 16 credit load of Botany, Aquatic Ent, 2nd term Organic Chemisty, and statistics. I don't think I should try it but I really really really want to take it and its not always offered. My advisor said that I could probably move botany to next winter, but it looks to me like botany is a pre-req for some other classes that I need to take.