Thanks to Krzysztof Zawierucha for identifying our orange tardigrade as a member of the genus Milnesium based on these photos Pacifica took with an inverted microscope, looking up through a petri dish from under the critter!
Check out the warthog-like face on this predatory water bear (below top right). It probably did not come from a cryoconite hole, but found its way into our sediment waste from samples of potential cryoconite sources we collected near the Canada Glacier. Tardigrades live in the soils of the Dry Valleys wherever there is sufficient moisture, such as the wetted margins of streams or in shady depressions where snow collects.
In the bottom right corner is a tardigrade more like the ones we typically see in cryoconite holes for comparison.
The numbers are not in any particular units here, but etched into the eyepiece. We haven’t added scale bars to these images, but the two full-body shots were taken with a 10x objective, and the head detail was taken with the 32x.
Cryo Holes 