Sunday, April 19, 2020

Today the lamprey become...ammocoetes

Some of the little lamprey are moving right along, today I found my first ammocoete.
Here you can see it looks like an actual fish now, there is a clear head and a tail. And for those of my students you can easily see three of the defining features of chordates here (post-anal tail, notochord, pharyngeal slits). Th tiny black dot is the eye, this is a fairly undeveloped eye mostly good at detecting light or dark, not for telling that a giant eye is looking at you through a microscope.

The gut is really dark in this photograph because it is still filled with yolk. As the animal finishes development the yolk will disappear and the gut will be ready for real food to start coming in.

Although you cannot see it in the picture, under the microscope it is easy to watch the little heart beating away.

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