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Croatia (II)

With the exception of Echiniscoides sigismundi (see  Sept. 2006 issue) our findings of maritime tardigrades until now had been restricted to Batillipes tardigrades only.

Yet in the more recent scientific literature there are abundant reports referring to other genera of maritime tardigrades, a rich world to explore for the microscope amateur, too. For example BOESGAARD described the claw-bearing maritime tardigrade Actinarctus neretinus which was isolated from 15kg of wet sand recovered by divers at about 20m depth at the darkest end of an Australian underwater cave. Well, who dares to ...? Definitely not us. We decided to look for maritime tardigrades in Mediterranean Croatia instead, at a depth of about 3.5m and with a sample amout of 20g sand instead of the reported 15kg.


[ Mali Losinj ]

Bay in front of the Aurora Hotel, Mali Losinj, Croatia. View onto the bay focusing our favourite shallow water diving area.

As usual we collected some clean sea sand and shell gravel containing samples by means of a plastic film container (one of those from ancient analogue photography times). It contained shell fragments, sea urchin stick fragments, medium sized sand grain etc.
Back at the hotel we quickly found a "new" tardigrade. Relying on our previous experience we delayed the better quality photographic documentation into the future, planning a re-examination when back home.
In fact we had learnt from sand samples containing Echiniscoides and Batillipes that the maritime tardigrades normally will survive even in a very minimalistic micro aquarium for weeks and months, probably even years.

But then, back at home in Munich we were terribly disappointed: no tardigrade at all could be found in those samples any more! After long search we came across a tardigrade cuticula (left after moulting) - better than nothing:


[ Cuticula of a tardigrade from the Losinj island ]

Cuticula of a tardigrade from the Losinj island, Croatia, length approximately 150 µm (0.15 mm).
Dark field illumination.

The microscopic study of the cuticula reveals thickened claw tips (appearing white in the photograph above) and a horizontal pattern on the dorsal armour plates, which - in contrast to most terrestrial tardigrades - is not segemented vertically into two parts. In the bright field photograph (below) the claw tips appear in a darker shade.


[ Cuticula eines Bärtierchens von der Insel Losinj ]

Cuticula of a tardigrade from the Losinj island, Croatia. Bright field photograph.

At higher magnification the dark claw tips appear as hooks, possibly made up of a different (stronger?) material. They are resembling parrot beaks:


[ Cuticula of a tardigrade from the Losinj island ]

Cuticula of a tardigrade from the Losinj island, Croatia, detail.

As we have other workload on the desk at the moment, the taxonomic discussion will have to be delayed until to the next issue, sorry.



Literature

Tom M. Boesgaard and Reinhardt M. Kristensen: Tardigrades from Australian Marine Caves. With a redescription of Actinarctus neretinus (Arthrotardigrada).
Zoologischer Anzeiger 240 (2001) p. 253-254.



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