Ciliates – SAR-Alveolata (Ciliophora)

Observations on Podophrya spec.

Position in the EOL taxonomic tree. Please click on the tree view below to access EOL (Encyclopedia of Life).

Podophrya Ehrenberg, 1833
Most likely ID: n.a.

Basionym: n.a.

Add’l Synonyms: n.a.

Sampling date 19/2008. Scale bar indicates 25 µm.

Suctor Podophrya spec. living epibiotic on the red alga Ceramium diaphanum.

Place name: Hiddensee Bodden (Germany)
Latitude: 54.582633 Longitude: 13.115051

Microscope Zeiss Universal, camera Olympus C7070WZ.

Scale bar indicates 25 µm.

Typical biocoenosis of Suctoria (Podophrya spec.) with Peritricha on filaments of the red alga Ceramium diaphanum. Peritricha (not only the ones with lorica) usually don´t act as prey for the Suctoria.

Place name: Hiddensee Bodden (Germany)
Latitude: 54.582633 Longitude: 13.115051

Microscope Zeiss Universal, camera Olympus C7070WZ.

Scale bar indicates 50 µm.

Podophrya spec. has caught a Trichodina steinii and is in the process of ingesting its cytoplasm. This does not work by sucking, as the name Suctoria (sucking infusors) might suggest. On the basis of a microtubular transport system within the tentacles, membrane-enclosed cytoplasm packets of the prey are transported into the suctoria cell.

Scale bar indicates 50 µm.

This image shows the state 1 hour after the previous image.

Scale bar indicates 50 µm.

After another hour, the Trichodina cell appears greatly inflated by a huge vacuole.

Scale bar indicates 10 µm.

Close-up of the previous image.

© Wolfgang Bettighofer,
images under Creative Commons License V 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA).
For permission to use of (high resolution) images please contact postmaster@protisten.de.

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Observations on Podophrya spec.

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