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Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 2:31 am
by macnmotion
I believe I found my first frontonia. Here is an image with 10x objective.
- is this frontonia sm.jpg (62.63 KiB) Viewed 2294 times
I shot some video at 40x, here is a short clip. Is this the oral opening or something else?
Re: Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:22 am
by Bruce Taylor
It is not Frontonia, which has a very different kind of mouth, shaped like a peaked doorway, with an undulating membrane on one side, three rows of fused cilia on the other side, and preoral and postoral "sutures" at each end. Some other features of Frontonia we don't see here: a generally flattened cell; at least one contractile vacuole, usually near the middle; trichocysts around the outer margin.
It's hard to say what we have here! It could be a somewhat compressed Trachelius (it would normally have a short "proboscis"...however, that structure can disappear when the cell is squashed under a coverslip).
Re: Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:49 am
by macnmotion
Bruce Taylor wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:22 am
It is not
Frontonia, which has a very different kind of mouth, shaped like a peaked doorway, with an undulating membrane on one side, three rows of fused cilia on the other side, and preoral and postoral "sutures" at each end. Some other features of
Frontonia we don't see here: a generally flattened cell; at least one contractile vacuole, usually near the middle; trichocysts around the outer margin.
It's hard to say what we have here! It could be a somewhat compressed
Trachelius (it would normally have a short "proboscis"...however, that structure can disappear when the cell is squashed under a coverslip).
Thanks Bruce. There were a number of what seemed to be very small contractile vacuoles. In this very short video you can see them all over the place. I've slowed the video to about 3/4 speed.
Re: Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:05 pm
by Bruce Taylor
Hmmm...very hard to be sure what's going on, there! FWIW, Trachelius does have multiple contractile vacuoles, scattered around the cell (I am thinking of that genus mainly because of the overall appearance of the cytoplasm, and the round mouth). But, whatever this is, I think it is squashed beyond recognition. Definitely not Frontonia, in any case.
Re: Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2023 4:44 pm
by macnmotion
Bruce Taylor wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 4:49 am
It's hard to say what we have here! It could be a somewhat compressed
Trachelius (it would normally have a short "proboscis"...however, that structure can disappear when the cell is squashed under a coverslip).
Just to close the loop on this one, after about 20 slides I found another of these organisms in the same water sample, this time the proboscis was clearly visible. The excess debris won't make for a good video but at least I was able to find it. It surely looks like trachelius to me. It came in at about 320 microns in length including the proboscis.
- trachelius with bars sm.jpg (61.82 KiB) Viewed 2189 times
- Trachelius.jpg (91.44 KiB) Viewed 2189 times
- Trachelius proboscis.jpg (104.1 KiB) Viewed 2181 times
Re: Is this frontonia oral opening, or some other opening?
Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2023 7:27 pm
by Bruce Taylor
Ah, well there it is:
Trachelius ovum.
The cytoplasm is distinctive, as is that little round donut of a mouth.