A Bad Day for Daphnia

They arrived sloshing around in four tightly-sealed jars tucked into corn-oil based pellets in a brown rush-shipment box. A quarter of them had croaked and were encapsulated in a thin moldy shroud, drifting in the dubious-looking water. The rest of the water fleas, after surviving this long, dark journey would soon be plucked from jar with an expertly wielded pipette, plonked onto glass slides and squished under the clamps of a microscope. Oh, the indignity of it all.

Daphnia