Tape Lift sampling.

[fairplay]

Tape Lift sampling is used by specialist laboratory's to check the cleanliness of surface areas in the preparation of food etc.

Basically, it is an easy way in which a responsible person can send off a suspected mould sample by placing a strip of clear adhesive tape onto a work surface, mouldy wall/ceiling, and sticking it to the inside of a sealable plastic bag.

This would then be sent off to the relevant laboratory for analysis.

I was wondering if this method has any role to play in Field Mycology ? I cannot see how, as the Field Mycologist will be bringing his samples back home in any case.

But in the field, it would be possible to transfer the tape (with spores attached) directly to a glass slide, thus saving quite a bit of time at home.
I have no idea if a stain such as Congo Red, would be drawn into the sample, but obviously they get round this somehow in the lab.

The biggest problem I suspect would be contamination and also the limit as to what you could pick up with the tape strip (possibly a scalpel scraping ?) and could you use immersion oil on tape ?

Does anyone have any thoughts or even experiences on this please ?

Neil.

[CapAndBracket]

Reasonable idea, i gess experiment and let us know how you get on is the best answer. I'm not sure about using immersion oil on tape (it would depend on refraction of light by tape as compared with cover slip).

One thought i did have, was relating to previoud post about the difficulty of getting spores from some polypore, i had wondered abut tapping a slide to the fruitbody (slide agaisnst pore surface, tape around bracket) and leave for a few days in the field just might do the trick.

Cheers J.P.

[fairplay]

I assume the lab technicians transfer the tape to a glass slide and put it under a scope but for clear spores they must use a stain somehow and the same with oil immersion for measuring.

When it was mentioned in a previous thread about scraping Cramp Balls and squashing coarse material with another glass slide, I must confess I hadn't thought of that before - it will save a lot of cover slips getting broke, I hope. But I was wondering how using selotape would cope with coarse material, how resolution would be affected, removing air bubbles if a stain was able to be applied, perhaps the whole idea is a non starter.

If taping a slide to the hymenium of a bracket fungus and leaving it overnight, hmmmm... can't see why not ? As long as you don't get slugs and snails leaving a trail ! but with a sporulating Ganoderma just wet your finger and dab it on a nearby leaf or the bracket top surface should do or you could use cotton buds.

Neil.

[CapAndBracket]

X1000

Further trials needed, but anyway i had a spore drop on a slide and just taped them down and used immerion oil on the tape to see how that part went, and usable would be a fair description.
If as you say, you collect sample with tape, i don't see why a drop of stain could not be applied to slide and then stick your tape with sample over it and leave to soak.

Cheers J.P.