Ciliate or Amoeba ?

[SWmicro]

Do ciliates have pseudopods as well ? I have seen many flexible ciliates but never like this shape-shifter.

Or is this just a hairy amoeba !

https://youtu.be/ElG72DFfMUY

Ciliate_or_Amoeba.jpg (85.15 KiB) Viewed 1232 times

[Javier]

Definitely a cialite struggling on a drying slide...

[Bruce Taylor]

Yes, a haptorid ciliate. Confinement (e.g. coverslip pressure associated with water-loss) sometimes makes ciliates very flexible. I've always suspected that it's a survival mechanism, useful for escaping from tight spots. I've never read anything about that, in ciliates, but somebody has probably written about it, somewhere. The adoption of an amoeba-like phenotype as a reaction to confinement has been observed in choanoflagellates: https://elifesciences.org/articles/61037

[Javier]

Yes, a haptorid ciliate. Confinement (e.g. coverslip pressure associated with water-loss) sometimes makes ciliates very flexible. I've always suspected that it's a survival mechanism, useful for escaping from tight spots. I've never read anything about that, in ciliates, but somebody has probably written about it, somewhere. The adoption of an amoeba-like phenotype as a reaction to confinement has been observed in choanoflagellates: https://elifesciences.org/articles/61037

This is very interesting, thanks for sharing!