Clearing and Staining Fishes
Diaphonization -- otherwise known as clearing and staining -- is one of the most photogenic preparation methods used by research scientists. It's beautiful, but is it practical? We interviewed...
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So we're here with Dr. Caleb McMahan, who is the collection managerof Fishes here at the Field Museum, and today we're going to be talking aboutclearing and staining. What is clearing and staining?Caleb: So, clearing and staining is a process where we take an entire specimenand we clear that specimen down and use different stains to stain different parts of the skeleton.Emily: So how is that process actually done -- how do you get from something that's, likepickled in a jar like this, to something that you can literally see through?Caleb: In general the process is that we start with aspecimen, so here we have a species of cichlid from Nicaragua and Costa Ricaand so we take this cichlid and the first thing we do -- and, again, some peopledo thi...
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So we're here with Dr. Caleb McMahan, who is the collection managerof Fishes here at the Field Museum, and today we're going to be talking aboutclearing and staining. What is clearing and staining?Caleb: So, clearing and staining is a process where we take an entire specimenand we clear that specimen down and use different stains to stain different parts of the skeleton.Emily: So how is that process actually done -- how do you get from something that's, likepickled in a jar like this, to something that you can literally see through?Caleb: In general the process is that we start with aspecimen, so here we have a species of cichlid from Nicaragua and Costa Ricaand so we take this cichlid and the first thing we do -- and, again, some peopledo thi...
