Krapanj (IV) - or male trouble or, possibly, a tardigrades' #MeToo ?
About 12 years ago, im August 2006 we had featured the anatomy of a Macrobiotus hufelandi male water bear.
In this old issue you will still be able to comfortably click through the tardigrade male anatomy.
With respect to the marine tardigrades it became much more difficult to discern between males and females.
In the beginning the visualization of analogous detail images appeared to range beyond our
technical possibilities. Please just keep in mind that such a croatian Florarctus male
is measuring not more than 0.1 mm, whereas the Macrobiotus male can easily reach 0.4 mm in length.
But in the end it worked out.
For a start let's have a look look at the total view image of a Florarctus sp. male tardigrade below.
At first sight (10fold objective) it doesn't reveal much detail. You will neither perceive
the typical, thin "potatoe chip coat" of the Floractus sp. tardigrade nor its eight legs.
And there are many fine structures which appear to be not exactly self-explaining.
The head filaments can be seen on the left side of the image, though already being partially out of focus.
The read marker square is referring to the text further below.
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