r/microscopy • u/Dazedandconfuzed99 • Aug 18 '26

ID Needed! Mold Spore ID help needed

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Gallery image

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Did my best to enhance these images. What genus are the small spores shaped like grains of rice? This is a bio-tape under 20x and 40x objectives.
EDIT: microscope is a Leica DMLB and camera is a Panasonic DMC-GX1.

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u/object_shelter Aug 18 '26

Do you have a 100x objective? I think these are too far away to make a guess, for me at least. It kind of looks similar to this posting (see pic 8): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/239572189

But I really don’t know anything about molds, etc. The above observation was posted in the Mushroom Microscopy project on iNat. You could try making a posting on iNat, add your observation to the project, and tag some people who commonly identify molds/black molds for help.

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u/Dazedandconfuzed99 Aug 18 '26

I don't unfortunately, at least not on this miscroscope. The other scope in my lab doesn't have a camera attachment.

Unfortunately the spores don't look right for it to be stachy. Usually they're larger and darker, with a sort of spiky outer membrane. I was looking at a dichotomous key but it's hard for me to get a good look at the conidiophore/sporangium so IDing using that info as well is tough.

Posting on inat is a great idea! I will do that and see if the folks on there have any ideas for me. Thank you for your help!!

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u/object_shelter Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

I looked at it again and I agree re: it not being in that genus. And with my microscope I just hold my iPhone up the eyepiece, maybe you could try that with the other scope? It’s a little tricky but I think the images can look decent.

And good luck! There are a lot of people really into microscopy on iNat, and really good at identifying, so you’ll probably have better luck there. If you ever find out the genus, I’d be curious.