Editor's note:  Jim Wetzel kindly offered some striking images taken using a scanning electron microscope (SEM, model J.E.O.L.35cf). Jim writes:

'I use SEM as a teaching tool (my own research involves developmental
ultrastructure - specifically seahorses & pipefishes) and combine it with art to draw broader student interest (across disciplines) into biology as a field for everyone.'

Comments to the author, Jim Wetzel are welcomed. The author's website is at
http://web.presby.edu/biology/faculty/jamest.html
 
 
 

1.  Head of a jumping spider @ 130X.  This image, and the rest are colored using Photoshop®, and the background in some eliminated.  Otherwise, they are unaltered.

2.  One of the centermost eyes of the above image; 540X.

3. A mature moss sporangium @ 100X.

4. The radula of a gastropod (tissues digested using Chlorox); 78X.

5. One isolated tooth of the above gastropod radula; 200X.

6. An SEM (66x) of two hydra.

7. An SEM of the skin (placoid scales) of the shark, Squalus acanthias; 72X.

8. A mid-development embryo of the dwarf seahorse, Hippocampus zosterae; 120X.  My primary research concerns embryogenesis in seahorses and pipefishes, and this species is my primary animal for study.

9. This is the hatching stage embryo (head) of the pipefish, Syngnathus scovelli; 100X.