Hello
i want to identify my collected soft corals with SEM photos. but in the papers i see the sclerites are from different part of the species.
i don't know how i can distinguish from which part of soft coral i should take the sclerites, for example , how i can distinguish the sclerites are from surface coenenchyme or are from interior coenenchyme, or are from polyp spindles .....
it is very emergency for me to know
thank you for your helping
It is about how you are doing the preparation, I mean you have to see where the sclerites come from during the dissolution . It is quite tricky in case of polyps - you have to dissolve them slowly under dissection microscope or light microscope and see where each sclerite came from.
I would advise you to refer to Fabricius and Alderslade Soft Corals and Sea Fans book , mainly pages 34-41 for Techniques for Examining and Identifying an Octocoral colony
try also this link
http://documents.mx/documents/octocoral-workshop-laboratory-manual-2007.html
What Tina said and Janes 2008
http://www.burgerszoo.com/media/560650/chapter-46.pdf
Other option is to do an SEM of the polyp and try to understand how the sclerites are distributed and organised there. Anyway you need to take a close look with the light microscope to observe the inner and outer layer of the coenenchyme before or during dissolutionof the tissues. Good luck!
Soroor, you have to sample from each area separately. In general, you cut a small piece from the surface of the polyp region and then a sample from the interior of this region. Then you do the same for the surface of the stalk and the interior of the stalk. With a polyp you sample the calyx separately if there is one, then the polyp tentacles, the polyp head and the polyp neck if you can see these regions contain sclerites.
It will be far easier to try to identify your specimens if you dissolve the tissue samples on microscope slides and use a light microscope, not an SEM.
thank you very much for you replies
i think i understand what should i do
thanks a lot
Hi Soroor,
Looking at the colony shape along with the shape of the sclerites from each region will guide you to find the genus that you have.
Good luck.
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