Hi! When I extracted haemolymph from the adductor muscle I saw this in the microscope at 20x magnification. Does anyone know what it is? It looks like a see-through bag and something came out of it.
Kind regards, Elina
Your images suggest that the sample added to your hemacytometer, or other, contained more than mussel hemolymph. As you know, withdrawing pure hemolymph samples from poorly visualized adductor muscles of live mussels and other bivalve molluscs is technically and famously challenging. Common contaminants include water and particles from the mantle cavity, and mussel gonads may also be sampled if the syringe needle penetrates a narrow adductor muscle completely.
At the 2:00 margin of your lower image, a rectangular object resembles a large diatom. The large, spherical objects that you wonder about were apparently ruptured following compression by your hemacytometer cover glass. They could be mussel, or other, oocytes or oogonia, or other larger, soft, spherical items in your sample.
A standard space between a hemacytometer grid surface and its coverglass is 100 µm, which is slightly larger than the 70-µm diameter reported for mature, spawned blue mussel eggs. I'm sure you know the size of that space for your own counting instrument.
Best regards, Chris Dungan
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