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A large group of copepod eggs.

A large group of copepod eggs.
A large group of copepod eggs.
A large group of copepod eggs.
A large group of copepod eggs.
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348294
Linder, Christopher L.
A large group of copepod eggs.
Still Image
05/01/2009
graphics/PD5_dailys/cl_20090501171653.jpg
The researchers count the eggs to calculate how many eggs the average female copepod of a particular species at that location is laying. These are some of the eggs laid by a hotel full of Calanus females several days ago. Each of these eggs is about 20 microns across-smaller than the width of a human hair. But if you want to know how fast the population of Calanus grows-and these scientists really, really want to know that-it's not enough to know how many eggs the females are laying. You also have to know how many of the eggs are good enough to hatch. So some of the eggs go on to another step. That's the copepod nursery, a pair of brown cafeteria trays on top of the hotel.
Image of The Day caption:
Freshly-laid eggs of copepods crowd a petri dish. During a cruise to the Bering Sea in 2009, WHOI biologist Carin Ashjian and colleagues studied the reproduction of the tiny crustaceans, which many larger animals rely on for food. They collected copepods and gave each female a "room" of her own in an incubator dubbed the "bug hotel." A day later, the researchers counted how many eggs each copepod had laid. The eggs, each with a diameter smaller than a human hair, were then incubated until hatching to determine how many young might have been produced in the wild. Ashjian recently made a wintertime cruise to study the productivity and food web of Arctic waters.
Photo by Chris Linder
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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