Creating slides: the third step in research at the Meiolab

This week at the lab I continued work on samples that Dr. Ingels and I collected last year from sediments near the FSU Coastal and Marine Lab in a project to understand meiofauna diversity in local sediments. The third step in research in the lab is creating slides of nematodes from processed sediments. If this is your first time here, I suggest reading through previous posts on the first two steps of meiofauna research at the Meiolab. Once nematodes have been picked out of sediment samples and put into embryo dishes, shown below, they are placed into the oven overnight so that some of the holding fluids can evaporate. In the morning, the embryo dishes containing nematodes and glycerol are removed from the oven and placed into a dessicator to await the next step: slide making.





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To make slides, our lab creates two circles of candle wax on the slide and places a drop of glycerol in the center of each wax circle. Then, I place the embryo dish under the microscope and use the hook tool, shown above, to pick out 10 nematodes to place in each drop of glycerol. I use the microscope to make sure that nematodes are not overlapping in the glycerol, which helps tremendously when it comes to the identification step. Once 10 nematodes are placed in both of the drops of glycerol, I cover the wax with a glass cover slip and melt the wax over a hot plate. The melted wax seals the cover slip and the glycerol creates a barrier between the wax and the nematodes. The slides are labeled and then ready for identification.
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