A good dissection microscope with bright light and plenty of working space is essential for preparing specimens for sectioning or SEM.

If you are going to study nongeniculate coralline algae successfully, you need to spend a bit of time examining the external features of specimens under a dissection microscope. Look for the features that you would like to have sections of such as conceptacles, conceptacles at different stages of development, margins, etc. Then, under the dissection microscope chop out the piece that you want to study further. One useful too for doing this is a pair of electrical wire cutters, also called diagonal cutters. You can also use a scalpel, and hit it with the diagonal cutters or something similar. When doing this is is often a good idea to work inside a plastic bag to prevent loss of the specimen fragment.

Fine forceps are essential for manipulating the small pieces for cleaning and mounting them on the SEM stub. Examine the fragments again under the dissection microscope to make sure you have the feature of interest and that it is not damaged. It is very frustrating to get to the SEM and spend all that time getting the specimen into view, only to discover that you broke the conceptacle. Also, rinse the dust off it using a squeeze bottle. Make a drawing of the specimen to note the orientation, otherwise you may end up mounting it upside-down. Once prepared, place the specimens in a small petridish or watch glass and dry in an oven or desiccator.

Mount the specimens on the SEM stub under a good dissection microscope so that you are sure you are orienting your specimen correctly.

Hint: The same preparation procedure can be used to prepare specimens for sectioning for light microscopy, or to prepare specimens for TEM work.

Gavin Maneveldt using diagonal cutters under a dissection microscope to remove a small fragment of a coralline specimen for further study (NTOU, Keelung, Taiwan, 1998).