Scanning Electron Microscopy

Over the last year I've been lucky enough to get a membership with UQ's excellent microscopy center, which includes 100 hours of time on the various microscopes. Ostensibly this time is earmarked for my thesis work, but I've been using a significant portion of it for my own hobbies, such as looking at animals from my back yard. This Friday I used it to look at a skink's hand and a moth. I did a more careful job of sample preparation this time, so the pictures I got were much more impressive than what I'd previously been able to achieve.


This is the front left hand of the skink.


This is a close up of one of the moth's main antennae. You can see several different types of sensilla on it. Some of the long hairs are chemoreceptors for tasting the air and some are mechanical actuators for measuring air currents. I'm not an entomologist so I don't know what's what really. This whole structure is about the same size as a human hair.


This is one of the mechanical actuator type sensilla. You can see the ball and socket type anchor.


This is the end of something - whether it's the moth's foot or another antennae, I'm not sure.


This is one of the compound eyes. It is close to a millimeter in diameter.


The same thing but a bit closer up. Each hex is an individual photoreceptor called an ommatidium.


This is an individual ommatidium. It is about 20 microns across. I'm not positive, but I believe the little dots on it are part of the cornea and are like an anti-reflective coating for each photoreceptor. I'm really not sure about this though. There's only so much moth literature I can read.


This is the moth's proboscis, all curled up.


These are the feathery bits at the end of the thorax, or whatever a moth's ass is called.


These are the scales on one of the wings. Each one is about 50 microns by 250 microns. I'm pretty sure they're curled up because of the way it was dried out.

Pretty cool!