Figure 1.
Photograph of adult and nymph H. flava.
(A and B) Photograph of a living adult female. Back and abdomen are shown. (C and D) A dead adult female. (E and F) A living nymph. (G and H) A dead nymph.
Figure 2.
(a) Whole body, (b) upper body, (c) capitulum, (d) 4th article, (e) spiracular plate, (f) claw and pulvilus of nymph are shown.
Figure 3.
Motion of a live tick under SEM.
Images of the TV mode were recorded. Time under vacuum conditions is shown on top of each picture. Leg movements are indicated by triangles.
Figure 4.
Survival of ticks after SEM observation.
Nymph ticks were classified into three groups; exposed to vacuum with electron beam, exposed to vacuum and control with no treatment. Each group consists of eight ticks. % of survivors per tested group are shown.
Figure 5.
Example of response to scanning in capture mode.
The continuous images of one tick are shown. Time under vacuum conditions is shown on top of each picture. (A) An image of TV mode before capture. (B and C) The scanned images. (D) A captured image. Distortion of image is clearly observed at the pulvilus. (E and F) The images of TV mode after D.
Figure 6.
Movement of four different ticks during image capture.
(A–D) An example of second leg and third leg. Distortion is indicated by triangles. (E) Frequency of movement from multiple experiments is shown. Totally, 178 captures were performed using 20 nymph ticks. Each leg was captured more than 2 times. The capture numbers were; 43 times for 1st leg, 46times for 2nd leg, 45 times for 3rd leg and 44 times for 4th leg.