Staining of subfossil chironomid head capsules: a method for improving the extraction process from lake sediments and peat
Staining of subfossil chironomid head capsules: a method for improving the extraction process from lake sediments and peat
Subfossil chironomids are regarded as a useful biological proxy for palaeoenvironmental research, but picking chironomid head capsules from aquatic sediments is extremely time-consuming. This is often the case for finding and isolating small head capsules from the deflocculated sediment. In this study, two stains (aniline blue and cotton blue) were used to dye chironomid head capsules in lake and peat sediments to improve the traditional pretreatment method and boost the picking efficiency. The results suggested that: (1) there were sharp contrasts between chironomids and residues after staining, which could shorten picking time for both lake and peat samples; (2) different parts of head capsules showed distinctive colour in stained samples and thus facilitated identification and taxonomy of subfossil chironomids; (3) the dyeing effects of two stains were comparable and no significant effect of staining on chironomid composition has been observed compared with unstained samples. This study demonstrates that aniline blue and cotton blue stain can promote picking efficiency of subfossil chironomids, and can be widely applied to pretreatment of sedimentary chironomids in palaeoenvironmental studies on lakes and peatlands.
Aniline blue, Cotton blue, Method improvement, Staining, Subfossil chironomids
631-640
Cao, Yanmin
4d43ed81-5111-4cd2-915a-25653ea9f70c
Zheng, Zijie
0c361308-5dec-4d26-b027-39b83f69297a
Luo, Xuan
b75c07ad-9dc1-4573-bab9-be974bd464a3
Langdon, Peter G.
95b97671-f9fe-4884-aca6-9aa3cd1a6d7f
Dai, Zhe
86fe44df-101f-4ed5-94ad-0747e0e5530b
Zhou, Anqi
c530d38b-4e9e-4427-ae9b-236610f4b0ad
1 February 2021
Cao, Yanmin
4d43ed81-5111-4cd2-915a-25653ea9f70c
Zheng, Zijie
0c361308-5dec-4d26-b027-39b83f69297a
Luo, Xuan
b75c07ad-9dc1-4573-bab9-be974bd464a3
Langdon, Peter G.
95b97671-f9fe-4884-aca6-9aa3cd1a6d7f
Dai, Zhe
86fe44df-101f-4ed5-94ad-0747e0e5530b
Zhou, Anqi
c530d38b-4e9e-4427-ae9b-236610f4b0ad
Cao, Yanmin, Zheng, Zijie, Luo, Xuan, Langdon, Peter G., Dai, Zhe and Zhou, Anqi
(2021)
Staining of subfossil chironomid head capsules: a method for improving the extraction process from lake sediments and peat.
Hydrobiologia, 848 (3), .
(doi:10.1007/s10750-020-04469-7).
Abstract
Subfossil chironomids are regarded as a useful biological proxy for palaeoenvironmental research, but picking chironomid head capsules from aquatic sediments is extremely time-consuming. This is often the case for finding and isolating small head capsules from the deflocculated sediment. In this study, two stains (aniline blue and cotton blue) were used to dye chironomid head capsules in lake and peat sediments to improve the traditional pretreatment method and boost the picking efficiency. The results suggested that: (1) there were sharp contrasts between chironomids and residues after staining, which could shorten picking time for both lake and peat samples; (2) different parts of head capsules showed distinctive colour in stained samples and thus facilitated identification and taxonomy of subfossil chironomids; (3) the dyeing effects of two stains were comparable and no significant effect of staining on chironomid composition has been observed compared with unstained samples. This study demonstrates that aniline blue and cotton blue stain can promote picking efficiency of subfossil chironomids, and can be widely applied to pretreatment of sedimentary chironomids in palaeoenvironmental studies on lakes and peatlands.
Text
HYDR-D-20-00085_R2 (1)
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 17 November 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 2 January 2021
Published date: 1 February 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We are very grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 41877428; 41402307) and the Fundamental Research Funds for National University, South-Central University for Nationalities (Grant Number: CZZ18007).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Aniline blue, Cotton blue, Method improvement, Staining, Subfossil chironomids
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 446280
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/446280
ISSN: 0018-8158
PURE UUID: ec9a8b78-0b39-44d8-ac4d-83a5bdeed3dd
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Date deposited: 03 Feb 2021 17:34
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:18
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Contributors
Author:
Yanmin Cao
Author:
Zijie Zheng
Author:
Xuan Luo
Author:
Zhe Dai
Author:
Anqi Zhou
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