This morning was 5 days after Emily and I collected the salamander eggs, and probably 7 days after the egg mass was laid in the vernal pool. The photos above show the earliest stage of organogenesis (organ formation). What you see in the photo on the left is the very start of neuralation, or neural tube formation. In the photo on the right there is one egg that is in the middle of the neural stage and another (egg on right) that has completed this stage and the egg is now elongated.
At the end of this stage, the neural fold closes (inward) and forms the neural tube that will contain the central nervous sytem, including spinal cord. I'm impressed with how this lens performs as these photos are fairly sharp and I am shooting through aquarium glass, a thick outer jelly covering over the eggs, and then the thicker jelly that surrounds each individual egg. That is a lot of gunk to shoot through including 2 inches of gelatenous gunk.
Equipment: Nikon D300 camera, Nikon AF-S VRII 105mm f/2.8 micro lens with TC-14EII teleconverter; Nikon SB-800s and SB-600 flashes
Settings: ISO 200, 1/125 sec, f/25, handheld
Sweet, it looks like the eggs are opening up rather than closing in; thanks for the lesson. Love the clarity, amazing rapid grow. Why is the photo on the left green and the one on the right not?
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. There is a green, wide-leaf, water plant several inches behind the eggs in the photo on the left. There are no plants behind the photo on the right, just open water background.
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