I'm a new PhD student and I'll soon be identifying chironomid head capsules from lake sediment as part of my project. I have some prior experience with chironomids, beetles, pollen and fungal spores and previously used an Olympus CX41 high powered optical light microscope, however this was a number of years ago. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a microscope best suited to this task?
Will you cursory view them for identifcation (of large numbers of specimens) or do you wish to mount them permanently for later use?
Also you can do a lot with a good binocular loupe before switching to a microscope.
If you will work with midge subfossil head capsules, I recomend you to do permanent slides in Euparal, I usually put about 10 hc under one large cover slip (15x15 mm) directly from 90% alcohol to Euparal dorp, and then make 2-3 cover slips on one slide praralelly, this fasten the work and save space. to my experence you don't need some special microscope. Just middle class Nikon for about 3 000 Euros is perfect, I use Japan microscope and Chiense bioncular each one for about 1000 - 1500 Euros and I am vary happy about that.
Thank you both for your answers, I'll be viewing them for identification and also mounting them, good to know I don't need a specialist microscope. Really appreciate the advice
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