Is this a ciliate or a flagellate?

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Jerradin
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:48 pm

Is this a ciliate or a flagellate?

#1 Post by Jerradin » Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:09 am

I'm having some difficulty identifying this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSnkdb26WVA

It's difficult to tell on camera, but it has a ring of hairs it's using to move, probably between 8 and 10 total. They're longer than what I would normally call cilia, but they're not the whiplike, sine-wave thing I'm used to seeing on a flagellate. I'm trying to ID it with the D.J. Patterson guide, but its binary key is kind of useless when you can't even answer the first major question. What is this thing?

Edit: Some possibly-important info: This is after a good while under the slide cover, so they've slowed down quite a lot. At first, they were zipping around very fast with a jerking motion.

Thanks!

DonSchaeffer
Posts: 3275
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 10:06 am
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Re: Is this a ciliate or a flagellate?

#2 Post by DonSchaeffer » Thu Aug 20, 2020 3:29 pm

I'm pretty sure it's a ciliate. I'm told ciliates frequently spin like that.

Jerradin
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:48 pm

Re: Is this a ciliate or a flagellate?

#3 Post by Jerradin » Thu Aug 20, 2020 6:44 pm

After some more reading, and based on the jumping movement it was exhibiting before I recorded this, I'm pretty sure it's a Halteria. I was getting tripped up because the equatorial cirri were long enough to look like stiff flagella of some kind.

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