Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Case of the Week 302

Several small dark-colored irregular "soot-like" objects (~1/4 inch long x 1/8 inch wide) were found floating on the surface of murky water in a neglected bird bath in late Spring. One such cluster was scooped out mostly intact and mounted on a slide for further examination. It is shown below.  Identification?
 




13 comments:

PCoyne said...

I'm not a mycologist... but these would appear to be fungal spores of some sort.

Anonymous said...

I would guess its a mosquito egg packet. Culex species?

Unknown said...

Mosquito (culex) egg rafts

Anonymous said...

I go with mosquito egg bundles. bw in vt

R Wendt said...

Mosquito egg rafts. I used to raise mosquitos and fed the females on my arms. They required a blood meal to produce eggs.

Giovan G. said...

I agree. It looks like mosquito egg rafts!

Anonymous said...

Culex mosquito egg rafts

Anonymous said...

After in-depth research on google images ;) , Culex mosquito egg rafts.

Lee

Unknown said...

Culex egg raft. Anopheles eggs would have lateral floats, Aedes doesn't lay eggs onto the water and Mansonia's eggs are laid just under the water surface (and have a spiny ending).

Anonymous said...

That's an entire collection of answers. I would go with Tomas's answer.

Florida Fan

Anonymous said...

Agree with Culex eggs which are stuck together in rafts. However, this characteristic is not specific to Culex only, as Culiseta's eggs can be also arranged in rafts.

Jamal

Anonymous said...

I think this is a culicine mosquito egg raft.
probably of the genus Aedes.

Anonymous said...

I think our hostess of the mostess weirdness is on vacation this week possibly plotting a really tough case.