mouse over trick

-An Interactive Rotifer-

by Wim van Egmond
The Netherlands

The week after Dave Walker wrote his article about Collotheca, the weird sessile rotifer, I discovered the creature in a pond near my home in Rotterdam. It stood on a strand of green algae full of diatoms and Suctoria. I photographed it in phase contrast since that seemed the easiest way to show both the transparent housing the rotifer lived in as well as the very thin elongated hairs it uses to catch tiny algae and bacteria. Of course there is not much I can add to Dave's excellent article but I thought of a little trick that could provide an extra dimension to depicting microscopic organisms on the Internet.

Wait for a moment until the images are loaded and then move the cursor over the image!

Collotheca ornata (16X phase)


This is just a funny way of using the 'mouse over' (or 'roll over image') option, but you can think of many more possibilities for this method of showing underlying information. I hope to explore some more possibilities of this trick in future Micscape articles. I have already made images of freshwater algae focusing on different parts of the organisms. Many organisms are very small as well as three-dimensional. Because of the enlargement you have very shallow depth of field. Then it becomes difficult to choose on which parts to focus. With a 'mouse over image' you can show the inside as well as the outer structures of a microscopic life form. If the application you like to create html pages with doesn't provide a way to make these 'roll over images' you can copy the html of this page. I could not think of another way. If I copied that bit of html into this text it would again show the actual 'roll over image' :-).

Comments to the author Wim van Egmond are welcomed.

More pictures of micro organisms can be found on Wim's HOME PAGE
or visit the Gallery of Rotifers

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Published in the November 2000 edition of Micscape Magazine.

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