How to image live mosquitoes under a foldscope: Asian Tiger Mosquito

Dec 29, 2017 • 10:41 PM UTC

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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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Here is a quick tutorial for mounting a live mosquito inside a foldscope.
1. Catch a live mosquito in a ziplock bag.
2. Wiggle the bag to move the mosquito to one of the bottom corner positions. This is the corner edge we will insert in the foldscope.
3. Either cut the corner with trapped mosquito and tape the open edge to make a small triangle – or keep the closed zip lock bag as it is.
4. Insert the ziplock bag inside the foldscope; instead of a glass slide (see previous video tutorial on in-situ sample mounting).
5. Image and observe a living insect/mosquito/spiders or anything you would like.
6. To avoid crushing the mosquito completely; put some small debris in the ziplock bag so the two walls are not crushed.
See quick video
A post shared by Foldscope Instruments, Inc (@teamfoldscope)
wild mosquitoes are known to carry many human diseases. Do not let them feed or bite you. Once you have caught a mosquito in a ziplock bag; you can experiment for a long time. Also, if you search in a house; you can often find sitting mosquitoes that have previously blood fed on someone else.
Keep exploring.
Cheers
Manu