These were then transferred to a solution of lactic acid and glycerol so that their insides are digested by the acid. You can see in the image here three of them floating in the lactic acid as they are digested. A few days later and the specimens' insides are largely gone.

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The specimen was then transferred to a drop of a mounting medium. I am using a mixture that can be made using stuff off of Amazon. It's yellow because it has iodine to stain the cuticle of the specimen. The mounting medium is nice because it's a mixture of sugar, iodine and lactic acid.

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That was allowed to dry for two weeks before putting some enamel paint around the coverslip to seal the specimen under the glass permanently. I messed up a bit and added too much. That's all the red you see there. The blue dots are paper towel divots because I didn't want to dirty my table.

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Only now, almost two weeks later, my specimen is ready to be identified! Now you need literature... books and papers possibly from decades ago, as this stuff isn't updated often. The first step was to find a key to the mites of the UK generally. Thankfully there's one compendium for UK mites.

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For fun, today I will walk through how acarology works, and how I got this mite I found by the Welsh shores down to species. This also applies to many insects. When someone says "Can you tell me what species this is?" is often a hard question to answer. #bugsky #inverts #entomology #ukwildlife 🧪🌿

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