Staining of subfossil chironomid head capsules: a method for improving the extraction process from lake sediments and peat

Subfossil chironomids are regarded as a useful biological proxy for palaeoenvironmental research, but picking chironomid head capsules from aquatic sediments is extremely time-consuming. This often the case finding and isolating small deflocculated sediment. In this study, two stains (aniline blue cotton blue) were used to dye in lake peat improve traditional pretreatment method boost efficiency. The results suggested that: (1) there sharp contrasts between residues after staining, which could shorten time both samples; (2) different parts of showed distinctive colour stained samples thus facilitated identification taxonomy subfossil chironomids; (3) dyeing effects comparable no significant effect staining on composition has been observed compared with unstained samples. study demonstrates that aniline stain can promote efficiency chironomids, be widely applied sedimentary studies lakes peatlands.