Folks,
Thought I would share a demonstration that worked great for me. I
have always wanted to see if I could find hair follicle mites. I found
a way of doing it and it worked great.
Richard Miller (from Butler University) suggested a procedure to me
that he found in E.O. Wilson's book, Biodivirsity. I pulled the skin
tight across the forehead and then had a student scrape the skin using
my trusty Swiss Army knife. Richard uses a weighing spatula but the one
I tried did not have a sharp enough edge to pile the skin on top of the
spatula. I then put the material on a slide in a drop of immersion oil.
You don't need to look at them under immersion oil, the oil just
captures them nicely. In fact I used only 10 and 20X so I would not get
oil on non-oil objectives. There may be a bit of difference on where on
the face you get them. The first time I tried the middle of the forehead
and did not get any. The second time we scraped right above the
eyebrows and added a scrape from the nose and I got three of them. MAN
are they ugly. There is an outside possibility I may have a slightly
different strain since I grew up in Eritrea, but I suspect US mites are
just as ugly. If I had not seen the eight stubby legs I would have
thought I had a worm. I did this with a microsope up front connected to
two TV screens for a large zoology class (70+) students and it worked
great. It took a bit of time, but I am sure it will go quicker next
time.
Thought this was something that some of you might like to try.
--
James F. Mahaffy e-mail: mahaffy at dordt.edu
Biology Department phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
