I think I understand classification better now

I met with Molly in February to discuss histology classificiation methods. She suggested I read Mladineo et al. 2007 and Ropes 1968 for their descriptions of maturation stages, as well as better pictures to help me discern between sexes and stages. I read the papers and they were very helpful! Mladineo et al. 2007 also had some interesting visuals and analysis methods that I could use if I find any significant differences in maturation between treatments.

I downloaded the original Google Sheets document and saved it as a .csv file in my repository. I then revised my classifications. I felt more confident assigning sexes than I did before, which made some of the stage classification a bit easier. I still have my doubts on a few classifications, so I’m going to send it over to Brent to see if he can help me now that Molly’s busy with work at Taylor.

Remeber those red spots I said I saw in my previous histology update? I emailed those pictures to Lisa Crosson. She sent me this response:

I think they might be ferrous cells/granules which typically have a brown/red “blob” morphology. I’ve seen them before in shellfish digestive, kidney and gonadal tissues likely due to the fact that there is a lot of cellular turnover going on leaving behind iron deposits. Could also be a random staining artifact which happens from time to time.

In my classification spreadsheet, I added a column for ferrous inclusions. I don’t know if this could be realted to maturation stage or sex, but it could be interesting to see if there’s a difference in presence/absence between treatments.

Now that I feel more confident with my classifications, I can work on analyzing them. If I make any change to the classifications, all I need to do is read my .csv file in again!