When a copepod smiles back at you..

Nov 25, 2017 • 12:52 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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A few friends and I have been going back and forth to San Francisco Bay; in the hope of starting larger scale sampling of the bay right here. After a few disappointing starts where we seemed to just get sand and silt (churned by the large ships bringing things into the port); we are now getting better at finding things.
Thibaut and Hongquan did a plankton tow late last night – and I had the pleasure of imaging some of the samples.
I also want to highlight how stable the new foldscope (v2.0) is – so I can record for hours without any focus drift.
After a quick plankton tow; I made a simple glass slide with cover slip with some side barriers (using tape) so the cover slip does not crush the delicate animals inside. I am thrilled with some of the results. Here are a few findings:

I asked a friend on Twitter to identify the species. This is incredible power of engaging globally – and learn from one another. Within 10min I had the ID.