Fission during conjugation

[billporter1456]

Maybe this is common, but I had not seen it before. I think the first image is Amphileptus in conjugation. The next image shows one of the conjugants developing a "waist." Last image shows just before separation after fission.

I am not sure of anything I said in the above paragraph, so I welcome comments and explanations.

These images are low quality as they are frame grabs from a video that is not that great. (Cheap objectives!) I have about 20 minutes of video of this and will probably do a YouTube once I am more sure what is going on.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[billporter1456]

Apparently it's not that rare for one of the conjugants to fission as I just saw it again. And the cell that was produced by the fission became involved in conjugation just 60 seconds after its "birth!." So I was looking at two conjugating pairs where, just a few minutes before, there had been one conjugating pair. And a fifth Amphileptus then entered the scene looking like it was trying to conjugate with one of the four conjugating individuals.

[vasselle]

very nice

[billporter1456]

very nice

Thank you, seb.

[billporter1456]

Here's a "rough cut" of the fission of one conjugant followed, just 60 seconds later, by conjugation with the "newly born" product of the fission.

https://youtu.be/NlQP0M392Do

[carlos.uruguay]

Wooowww rare

[billporter1456]

Wooowww rare

I guess it must be unusual. I posted about this on several forums and no one has said anything useful about it. I'll bet Bruce Taylor could tell us something.

[Jacek]

Very nice

[fpelectronica]

Very nice

[billporter1456]

Thanks Jacek and Francisco!