A switching station

Ganglia are part of the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system includes all nerves outside the central nervous system (bundles of long nerve shoots with supporting cells) and small centers of nerve cells the ganglia.

A ganglion is a combination of mainly cell bodies (ganglion cells) with the nucleus of the nerve cell surrounded by cytoplasm without further shoots. This cell body with the nucleus as its center forms the metabolic center of the cell and is sensitive to stimuli. Ganglia function as switching stations for nerve impulses.

A pest from Africa

The southern green stinkbug (Nezara viridula) is a relatively new pest that originates from Ethiopia. The pest has a large number of host plants, but in horticulture this bug is mainly found in bell pepper cultivation. In the first instance, in The Netherlands, the southern green stink bug was only spotted at the end of the summer, but the bug has also shown itself earlier in the season in recent years.

Females lay around 30 to 130 eggs at a time. They do this in "glued together", yellow and white clusters at the bottom of the leaf. If they are just laid, they look like little pearls. Depending on the temperature, the eggs hatch after 4 days to 3 weeks and the empty eggs remain on the leaf. The nymphs initially stay together and do not yet affect the plant. They then go through different stages, each time shedding their skin, with each stage having a different appearance. In the fifth stage, the bugs begin to spread over the plant and eat it.

Sundew

Sundew or Drosera forms perfect rosettes to the ground and has red tentacles with a sticky, glittering droplet which is secreted by a gland. The flower owes its name to this. Small animals get stuck in the drop and are pushed by the moving tentacles to the leaf surface where they are digested.

Prepared slide by Lieder

© www.willemsmicroscope.com

Drill a hole before you can eat

The whelk or Buccinum undatum (Linnaeus, 1758) belongs to the snails (Gastropoda).

The whelk is a large, thick predatory snail with 7 or 8 turns. A deep seam runs between the turns. The mouth opening takes up almost half of the shell and ends in a sipho. On the surface there are horizontal ribs and clear vertical growth lines. Often there are also vertical ribs at the top of the shell. It grows up to 11 cm high and 7 cm wide. The whelk has yellowish-white with dark spots. Whelks washed ashore are often dark blue, because they have been lying on the bottom of the sea for a long time.

Built for speed

The peregrine falcon is one of the fastest birds in the sky. During level flight, with motion generated by wing-beats alone, they can reach speeds between 60-100 km/h. This is one of the fastest known speeds for level flight.

Stamens and a jewel clip

If anything stands out about the bunch of lilies pictured below, it is the large dark coloured stamens. These are worth seeing under the stereo microscope. There is a handy tool to enable this. 

It is better not to have this on your skin

Carp Louse. This highly flattened fish parasite is covered with a back shield. At the bottom of the head, the first lower jaws are transformed into suction cups with which they attach to fish. The chest piece consists of only four segments, each of which carries a pair of split-leg shaped swim legs. The abdomen is little developed and not externally articulated.

A find on the beach

The shells or shields on the back of the various species of cuttlefish Sepia spec. consist of brittle lime (sometimes also referred to as Sea Foam) and are softer on one side than on the other. There is gas between the layers of lime, so that they float and often wash up on the beach.

Cuttlefish are good swimmers who can cover large distances. Sometimes animals wash ashore on the coast, but more often loose back shields. They have good buoyancy and can wash up on the beach at a great distance from the place where the animal died.

Does this grow into a stink bug?

The Common green stinkbug or Palomena prasina is a common bug. You can find it in large parts of Europe, North Africa and the temperate parts of Asia. The bug has adapted to all kinds of biotopes such as forests, grasslands with suitable shrubs, marshes, gardens and parks, as long as food plants grow.

It hides in moss and lichen

When studying moss and lichen under the microscope, you will discover that in addition to the beautiful pictures it produces, a lot of animal life crawls around in it. If you walk through nature and see the many types of moss and lichen, you actually do not realize that. This is perhaps due to the fact that the animals are hardly visible to the naked eye.

What makes a human tooth

The images of a cross-section of the root of a tooth (a ground preparation) show various details of the structure of a tooth. Many of the visible details will not be discussed here. To go more deeply, scientific literature is available.

Green curls

Cord moss or Funaria hygrometrica is one of the most common mosses in The Netherlands, especially in severely disturbed and nutrient-rich places such as vacant lots, semi-paved roads etc. A favorite habitat is burning places. A short time after the occurrence of a burn spot, Funaria hygrometrica is almost always present. The spread with spores via the air is extremely effective! In The Netherlands there are few large areas where there is so little disruption that there is no suitable place for Funaria hygrometrica, even if only temporarily.

This is not possible with our epidermis

The scales of a fish are slanted in the skin of the fish and consist of collagen, calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. They overlap and form a firm layer that protects the fish against injuries, parasites and enemies. In many cases they also serve as reflectors or give colors.

How do you look after four times shedding your skin

An adult female mosquito lays her eggs on the water surface. This can be in a ditch, in pools in the floodplains, in a pond or in the rain barrel. Each species has its own preference. The number of eggs that are laid is very different from species to species and can be up to 300 at a time. After a few days, the larvae crawl out of the egg. These larvae feed on algae, microbes and other substances in the water.

Green light from the rocks of the Aladzha Monastery

The remains of the Aladzha Monastery on the Black Sea coast are located just above the port city of Varna, Bulgaria. In the very distant past, this monastery was carved out of a steep rock wall consisting of limestone. The monastery is formed by small caves situated at different levels in the rock wall.

In the photos of some pieces of limestone you can recognize the powdery structure of this soft limestone. 

However, let’s still have a look under the fluorescence microscope then; blue light excitation and FITC filter.  As can you see, green light, this white limestone shows auto fluorescence.

Smell at a distance

The female silk worm moth (Bombyx mori) makes the pheromone bombykol in a special organ in her abdomen. When she is prepared to mate she releases this to attract males. A male silk worm moth has two long antennas that are very sensitive to the odor of the female. One single molecule is enough to cause a reaction in the sensory cells on the male's antenna. In this way he can locate the female. Even at a distance of 10 kilometers, he can still smell her!