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Female calanus copepod

Female calanus copepod
Female calanus copepod
Female calanus copepod
Female calanus copepod
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348315
Linder, Christopher L.
Female calanus copepod
Still Image
05/04/2009
graphics/PD5_dailys/cl_20090504144733.jpg
Every day the zooplankton researchers fish copepods out of the Bering Sea with vertical nets that go straight down and come up again, brimming with life. Then they sit at microscopes and try to pick out 40 females of each of three types-Calanus, Metridia, and Pseudocalanus-to put into the bug hotel. This female Calanus is about five millimeters long. The copepods from some stations lay lots of eggs, while others don't; sometimes Carin Ashjian says she can guess which are likely to be big egg-layers when she's sorting them. "Sometimes the whole sample will look really ripe-they're pink. These girls don't look as ripe."
Image of The Day caption:
Crustaceans come in all sizes. At the top of the scale are crabs with foot-long legs and tasty lobsters. Down near the bottom are copepods--critters the size of a pencil point. This female copepod is about five millimeters long. Copepods live in fresh water and in the ocean. "They're an important link in the food chain," says WHOI biologist Carin Ashjian, who led a team of researchers on an April 2009 expedition to the Bering Sea to learn more about sea ice and how climate change could be affecting the region's ecosystem.
Photo by Chris Linder
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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