Cyclops in Colorado

Cyclops, found 15 August 2008 in a pond at the Fountain Creek Nature Center. It is less than 1mm in length. This is a female, and is carrying eggs in the two small sacks. The picture was taken through a microsope, x100 magnification.

Click here or here for videos of the cyclops.

The second picture was taken of a cyclops found on 22 April 2009 in a small pond in Elbert county, Colorado. The third picture is another individual, same place and time, and shows good detail of the tail.

They have five pair of swimming legs, but only the first picture shows them, but not clearly. They swim with a jerky motion, quite rapidly.

The last picture has a cyclops at the top. The structure in the middle of the picture is a form of green algae known as a water net. More information can be found in the Plantae section of this collection.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Crustacea
Class: Maxillopoda
Subclass: Copepoda
Order: Cyclopoida
Family: Cyclopidae
Genus: Cyclops