The centrohelid heliozoan Raphidiophrys

[tlansing]

Raphidiophrys is a centrohelid heliozoan that forms colonies of individuals connected together by plasmatic bridges, as seen in the photos below. You can also see the scales that cover the axopods and the body of the cell. The interesting thing that I noticed in watching these organisms is that there is vesicle traffic between individuals in the colony, as shown in the video (the slight shakiness at the beginning is from me bumping my microscope table).

Raphidiophrys-1.jpg (63.22 KiB) Viewed 927 times

Raphidiophrys-2.jpg (67.07 KiB) Viewed 927 times

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaGDw2e6cBg

[Javier]

Very nice, Tim!

I recall someone posting something about a Heliozoan absorbing another one. Do you know the function of that vesicle? Some kind of conjugation maybe?

[tlansing]

Thanks, Javier!

Sometimes heliozoans can merge into one cell in a process called plasmogamy. An example in Actinosphaerium is shown in the photo below.

Actinosphaerium plasmogamy.jpg (131.12 KiB) Viewed 846 times

With Raphidiophrys, I have not seen reports of plasmogamy, and I have not been able to find any information about the exchange of vesicles/cytoplasm between individuals in a colony of these cells.

Tim

[Wes]

Quite a nice finding and superb documentation. Btw you can directly embed the video here in the thread by placing the video ID within the youtube tags

e.g. the ID of your video is HaGDw2e6cBg and you put it [*youtube ]*here*[/youtube*] (without the asterisks)

[tlansing]

Hi Wes,

Thanks for your kind comments and the very useful info about embedding a YouTube video. I finally know how to do this!

Tim