Macro photos of freshwater amphipods

[Ecooper]

amphipod tiff spotted edit colour_filtered unsharpen_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

It has been waaaaay too long since I posted any photos. Funny how life can speed-up and suck all your time—especially over Christmas holidays when you have kids! Anyhow, I’m back and after a 2-week hiatus I have finally posted some photos on my blog of freshwater amphipods (that I took last summer). The photo above is of a very pretty specimen of Gammarus lacustris; apparently the only species of freshwater gammarid amphipod found in British Columbia.

Whenever (and wherever) I have collected freshwater Gammarus in the past, they have been coloured drab shades of brown and olive green. But as you can see, the specimensIcollectedfrom this particular stream showed some real diversity in colouration, including some really pretty specimens with bright red spots on a translucent yellowish body. Others had a single very obvious bright red spot on their side. I still don’t know if the spot was on the critter’s exoskeleton or was something inside the body…


amphipod red spot sharpened copyright ernie cooper_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

I really need to get back to that stream again this summer to collect more of these crittersand do a better job of photographing them…

Cheers,
EC
www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

 

[EmmaBproductions]

I love the first one

 

[deeky]

Great shots of some scuds. The red spot is actually a colony of parasites in the amphipod. The flyfishing community has picked on the red spots as fish often seem to key in better on scud patterns with a red spot midway up. Anyway, I digress.....

Great shots.

 

[orionmystery]

Cool creatures...esp like the first.

 

[MiFleur]

I really like the first one, how did you shoot that? no camera info on your flickr page

 

[tpe]

Excelent shots

Tim

 

[squirrels]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing those!
C

 

[Ecooper]

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

EC
www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

 

[Ecooper]

Great shots of some scuds. The red spot is actually a colony of parasites in the amphipod. The flyfishing community has picked on the red spots as fish often seem to key in better on scud patterns with a red spot midway up. Anyway, I digress.....

Great shots.

Thank you very much for this! Turns out the parasite is an acanthocephalan worm called Polymorphus. Now I am especially keen to get back to that stream this spring and see if I can find more infected specimens. Hopefully I’ll be able to dissect out a specimen to have a look at (and maybe photograph) under the microscope...

Cheers,
EC
macrocritters

 

[Ecooper]

I really like the first one, how did you shoot that? no camera info on your flickr page

The amphipod was in a small aquarium (approx 8" long, 4" wide. 4" deep).

Camera: Olympus E-620 digital SLR
Lens: Zuiko 35mm macro
Settings: manual exposure (F11 @ 1/125 sec)
Lighting: on-camera flash (full power)
ISO: 100

Cheers,
EC
www.macrocritters.wordpress.com