Vampyrellidae

Platyreta germanica is a shell-less amoeba from the family Vampyrellidae, strain Cercozoa. She is the only member of the genus Platyreta.

Features

The amoeba is has many nuclei and reticulated pseudopodia ( Reticulopodien ). She has a multi-phase life cycle, which is influenced by the availability of food. The food receiving form ( trophozoite ) are between 50 and several hundred microns in size, shape ranges from spherical to stretched and heavily branched, but is mostly flat. The fine, non- granular filopodia may occur at any point in the cell. The trophozoite is mobile and changes its shape. It moves by crawling over the substrate, the filopodia rest on the substrate. The nucleus is spindle-shaped and about 2 microns in size.

The amoebae are changing under different conditions in order to cysts: after food intake or dehydration. Digestive cysts turn into trophozoites then again or perform before or cell division. When leaving the cyst the amoeba flows through about 10 holes out in the cyst wall of this.

Through cell fusion also plasmodia may arise which are usually strongly reticulate. They are up to 1 mm in size. Sexual stages were not observed, but the presence of zweigeißeligen zoospores. This small moth are formed with rapid growth and can swim with their pseudopodia also.

Occurrence and diet

The amoebae are bottom dwellers. They feed on fungal conidia, algae and nematodes. You take on the food and pierce the cell wall. After that completes the amoeba and is used for digestive cyst. It forms several digestive vacuoles, which unite later to a large Zentralvakuole. The digestion cysts are egg-shaped and measure about 50 x 35 microns.

Documents

• David Bass, Ema E. - Y.Chao, Sergey Nikolaev, Akinori Yabuki, Ken - ichiro Ishida, Cédric Berney, Ursula Pakzad, Claudia Wylezich, Thomas Cavalier- Smith, Phylogeny of Novel Naked Filose and Reticulose Cercozoa: Granofilosea cl.n. and Proteomyxidea Revised. Protist, 2008 doi: 10.1016/j.protis.2008.07.002

• Cercozoa (Taxon )
• Cercozoa