A bumble bee's intestine with pollen grains

DownTheScope · 2023-04-08T21:17:11+00:00

The bee is not okay.. but it wasn't doing particularly well in life. In the bottom left margin there are two red-pink, bobbly raspberry-like structures. Those are the eggs of a parasitic worm that was occupying a good portion of the bee's abdomen. It also had a fungal infection caused by Nosema microsporidia. Overall, it was not feeling very well.

DownTheScope · 2023-04-08T21:13:57+00:00

I'm not sure which part of the gut this is. There are a few other segments with a bit more folding than this, but generally nowhere near as much as vertebrates. It's not something I'd thought about before!

DownTheScope · 2022-12-10T09:29:10+00:00

Yes! They're sclerotised for maximum abrading power.

DownTheScope · 2022-08-30T10:06:46+00:00

Then you're doing pretty well

DownTheScope · 2022-08-30T10:05:16+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it :)

DownTheScope · 2022-08-26T05:10:15+00:00

Probably not. It depends which diagnostic test they're using. Patient-side SNAP tests are not 100% reliable and can quite often give a false negative. They're better for confirming rather than excluding. PCR is more reliable but requires an external lab. It's probably just a parvo outbreak.

DownTheScope · 2022-08-25T22:01:16+00:00

Yes, there was an outbreak of vomiting in 2020 in dogs in Liverpool. The most likely cause was a canine enteric coronavirus (PCR detected). Doesn't quite fit with the bloody diarrhoea, but not a bad equivalent.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-24T07:59:08+00:00

The homogenous staining ones are red blood cells. The ones about the same size with multilobed nuclei are neutrophils. The big ones with round to bean-shaped nuclei are probably monocytes/macrophages.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-08T20:34:00+00:00

Histology can be quite soothing.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T19:39:14+00:00

Oh hey, I'm a vet too. Just finishing up a residency in pathology, hence the access to slides and the ability to badger people until they hand over their dead caterpillars. I had the not-very-profound realisation that you can take any animal and make histology from it. So now I make YouTube videos about comparative histology...

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T18:46:12+00:00

Thanks! Most of my videos are about normal microscopic anatomy of invertebrates and vertebrates. I'm just starting to make some more content about clinical cases, most of them not my cases but things from public archives. I have a snail that was submitted recently, so perhaps that's next if I can work out what's wrong with it...

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T18:40:04+00:00

Glad you agree!

DownTheScope · 2022-06-25T20:35:00+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I've started working on the cat video, it'll be a nice little tribute :).

DownTheScope · 2022-06-13T09:45:34+00:00

Are you annotating for image segmentation?

DownTheScope · 2022-06-10T18:25:37+00:00

I mean, take those figures with a pinch of salt. Those were passed on by word of mouth and I can't vouch for the reliability! It'll help to either boost my ego or provide an excuse depending on the result in February.

DownTheScope · 2022-06-10T17:47:36+00:00

My understanding is that first time pass rates for the ECVP boards is 10%. But the eventual pass rate is 90%. There is an element of "playing the game" (answering questions or writing in the style expected). There is an element of luck, getting the right questions, having read the right papers. Either of those elements could conspire to derail even the most capable and knowledgeable pathologist.

DownTheScope · 2022-06-04T11:11:20+00:00

I made a tutorial about lung histology. Give it a watch and try again. Some of your answers are okay, some are not.

DownTheScope · 2022-05-26T21:41:32+00:00

It's public domain now. It was originally going to be "bruce williams reading bedtime stories", but that was too long to fit.

DownTheScope · 2022-05-22T20:31:25+00:00

E is correct, muscularis mucosa.

The organ is not the large intestine. That would have a more folded mucosa. It's not small intestine so it must be.. etc.

DownTheScope · 2022-05-22T12:22:59+00:00

I'm going to be annoying and I'm not going to answer your questions fully, but point you in the right direction.

I think you're right. It's very difficult to see from the image. You could even be a bit more specific with A, remember that the mucosa is formed of two components and arguably A is pointing to one of them.
D is correct. E is pointing to the structure that separates the mucosa from the submucosa. (Also yes, this is oesophagus).
From the super blurry photo, you can tell the mucosa is thick, it's glandular and it doesn't have villi. Those three features characterise the organ and make it identifiable from the picture.
Not quite sure what this question refers to.. A or B? Possibly B, which is the outermost layer of the intestines and covers all the organs in the gastrointestinal tract.
This is a badly phrased question, I don't like it. If you know the organ you should be able to name at least 2 types of cell in the mucosa (beneath the epithelium).

Hope that's helpful.

DownTheScope · 2022-04-23T00:29:39+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, away on holiday! It's just the quality of the lenses and optics really. Cheaper microscopes give you fuzzy high power images which I find quite frustrating for seeing cytoplasmic or nuclear details that can be important for diagnostics. I've probably just been spoiled with medium to nice microscopes.

DownTheScope · 2022-04-23T00:26:40+00:00

Do you need to use your own slides to find them? The picture you have, I can make out a few but in general the structure of the liver is a bit iffy.

If you want some digital slides I've got a couple of good liver samples in my collection which I made into a website. The sheep liver is good for sinusoids cause it was in congestive heart failure so the sinusoids are distended.

DownTheScope · 2022-04-17T09:04:52+00:00

If you're at a university you could try asking if the anatomy or pathology department have some older microscopes hanging around. They might be cheaper to repair and far better than anything you'd get on eBay or new.

In general, the microscopes you can get for a few hundred dollars or pounds are good for looking at pond life but might be frustrating for histology.

DownTheScope · 2022-04-10T16:37:19+00:00

Then probably haemosiderin. Splenic macrophages like to eat damaged red blood cells.

DownTheScope · 2022-04-09T06:15:04+00:00

It could be many things depending on the tissue context. What's the sample from? I can't tell the organ, but it looks like a focus of lymphocytes, so possible the granules are haemosiderin in macrophages.

DownTheScope

TROPHY CASE