A histological procedure for the study of insect chitinized tissues in light microscopy.

We present a procedure to obtain histological preparations of insect cuticles for their observation in ligth microscopy. The use of EDTA (ethylendiaminetetraacetic acid), as a chelator of certain metals present in chitin, soften the tissues and allows us to cut them. The tissues were embbeding in plastic resines in two different protocols and cutted by cryostat (20-30 μm) and ultramicrotome (4 μm) respectively.