Parasite questions

bathypol

Wonderpus
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Mar 2, 2004
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As I've been learning about arctic cephs, I came across references of dicyemids in the renal organs. Since then I've been looking at all of my specimens trying to spot one (with no luck :hmm:). Some references state that they first observe the kidney to be infected and then examine it under a microscope. How do they tell they are infected? Do they look damaged? Different colour?

My next question relates to preserving the parasites. Most references are by the same person who says that you first preserve the cephalopod in 10% formalin and then preserve the renal organ in Bouin's. Does this make sense? Why would you preserve something twice? :confused:

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help solve these delemmas :biggrin2:
 
bathypol;121285 said:
As I've been learning about arctic cephs, I came across references of dicyemids in the renal organs. Since then I've been looking at all of my specimens trying to spot one (with no luck :hmm:). Some references state that they first observe the kidney to be infected and then examine it under a microscope. How do they tell they are infected? Do they look damaged? Different colour?

My next question relates to preserving the parasites. Most references are by the same person who says that you first preserve the cephalopod in 10% formalin and then preserve the renal organ in Bouin's. Does this make sense? Why would you preserve something twice? :confused:

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help solve these delemmas :biggrin2:

Buried somewhere deep in the Te Papa blog comments from the Colossal Squid thaw is some parasitologist begging for the folks to remove any parasitic thingies from the squid and preserve them in ethanol(?) before exposing them to formalin(?) which would apparently wreck what he was interested in. This was for some reason a parasite expected in the gut, so it's unrelated, and AFAIK the squid squad didn't act on it, presumably because a request during a complicated process requiring radical change of plans is a bit late, because they saved the stomach contents before putting the formalin in, or because they didn't find any of these parasites anyway.

I have no idea if any of that is helpful for your question. I posted a link to an article on the kidney parasite (I think I found it on Pharyngula, but I could be wrong) some months back in physiology & biology... if it has links to the original paper, that probably has a methods section, although I suspect you already have looked at that, so I won't bother going to find it.

I'd never heard of Bouin's until you mentioned it, but from looking it up, it sounds like it preserves internal cell structure better than formalin for some reason, so maybe the formalin is for preserving the large-scale tissues and the Bouin's is for preserving the internal cellular structure? That's a wild guess, though, and probably wrong since Bouin's contains formaldehyde anyway...
 
I found Anisakis simplex attached to digestive gland, connective tissue etc of Nototodarus sloanii. I also found my "mystery parasite" which to date remains unidentified (I'm supposed to send some to Erich Hochberg but I don't have good specimens at present, wouldn't you know when I want them I can't find them :banghead:) any way pics can be found in this thread Parasites more suggestions on ID would be grand!

J
 
Thanks Monty :biggrin2:

monty;121286 said:
Buried somewhere deep in the Te Papa blog comments from the Colossal Squid thaw is some parasitologist begging for the folks to remove any parasitic thingies from the squid...

I think I might know that parasitologist! :smile: I should e-mail him to see if he's got any suggestions :biggrin2:

I did see your post (it was one of the reasons I started looking for these tiny creatures), but I'll double check for a methods section.

Thanks again for the help!
 

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