Courtesy of

ARK - Arizona Rivulin Keepers

The Scheel Letters, No. 2

When working with very small batches of eggs, in which the number of eggs were counted and where each egg was inspected under the microscope, and all information noted on the "card" for each batch, in 1958, I found something that pointed in the direction of the existence of a state of development which may be called "Resting Embryo". In these eggs, in the microscope, it was very easy to find an unpigmented embryo, which also had no blood-system developed. These early states of the development of the embryo had a distinct segmentation of the long and slender body and also traces of what later on should be the eyes. The full length of such embryos was about 180_ that is to say that the whole body occupied half the circumference of the yolk ball. But these embryos apparently did not develop further. I thought that they were dead, but as the eggs did not get fungus, or decomposed inside, I thought that this possibly could be a new type of "dormant life of eggs". These "apparently dead or sleeping" states of development I first saw in several batches of eggs of Nothobranchius palmquisti, later in the different crosses in this genus, but I had not time enough to explore this matter further. Then my friend Claus Petersen gave me a few eggs of another Nothobranchius, which he called "kuhntae" (possible "orthonotus" or something like that). These eggs had been in water (rather dirty to my opinion) for some time, perhaps a month or so. I got them during the first days of Oct. 58. After some days in water, where they showed no change, I dried them up in a little peat.