ID??

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:37 am

I found this beautiful ciliate and I would like to know the ID.

It is always moving; but sometime it does small pause.

Objective: Plan Apo 20x/0.75, DIC

Rogelio

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:33 am

Beautiful. He seems quite large and there ought to be a record of it somewhere.

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:34 pm

Mitch,

Thank you for your comments.

Rogelio

arturoag75 · Post by **arturoag75** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:42 am

Super job Rogelio...it look like an Urostyla ciliate!
best
arturo

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:41 am

nice specimen, and beautiful pictures

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:29 am

Rogelio excellent photos.
As always.
It may be Urostyla rubra?
carlos

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:45 am

It belongs to the order Urostylida, but identifying to genus level will be hard, I think.

I puzzled over it, yesterday, but kept quiet because I could not be sure whether the creature has transverse cirri (aka "anal styles" or "anal cirri"). These are the cirri we often see as a small patch on the ventral surface, at the posterior of the cell, often running perpendicular to the body (or set at an angle). If they are indeed absent, as it appears, we rule out Urostyla, because it has them (lllustrated Guide vol. 1 p. 441 and NIES entry on Urostyla...although Borror (1972) allows some Urostyla to be without them).

So, we wade into the swamp of the Urostylids, considering creatures like Eschaneustyla, Hemicycliostyla and Australothrix, which are defined as lacking transverse cirri, and Pseudourostyla (frustratingly described as usually having transverse cirri!). Looking for good descriptions and pictures of these guys, we go back to Stokes (1886) . Along the way, we learn that Hemicycliostyla and Eschaneustylas were moved to Urostyla, in Borror's revision of 1972. While Eschaneustyla still stands in the ISOP guide, Hemicycliostyla has vanished altogether.

All the while, one keenly feels the lack of a particular resource: Berger's Monograph of the Urostyloidea. And one is painfully aware that even Berger is a bit out of date...for, even as we speak, molecular/genetic research based on small subunit rRNA sequences is rewriting the family tree!

So, I give up. It is some kind of Urostylid.

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:54 am

carlos.uruguay wrote: It may be Urostyla rubra?

Which Borror (1972) moved to Paraurostyla...and which Berger files under "Species indeterminata."

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:23 am

Hi Bruce.
Think you can be Paraurostyla? or lacks the terminal cirrus?
carlos

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:27 am

carlos.uruguay wrote:Hi Bruce.
Think you can be Paraurostyla? or lacks the terminal cirrus?
carlos

With the little I know, I would not go further than "Urostylid."

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:02 pm

Carlos, I was able to get a library-copy of Berger's text (1300+ pages entirely on Urostyloids!). There is an entry on Urostyla/Paraurostyla rubra, which entertainingly highlights the difficulty of trying to identify organisms from old pictures and descriptions. Here, Berger is working from a poor photocopy of a poor record of an organism seen more than a hundred years ago in the Black Sea and described in Russian. Being unable to extract anything useful from Andrussowa (1886), he reproduces Kahl's nice drawing, which, apparently, gives no information about size, and no sign of a macronucleus. So, he deduces the colour of the creature (red) from its name, and notes the lack of transverse cirri...which place it somewhere outside Urostyla, but (as Borror and Wicklow say), of uncertain taxonomic position. If it exists at all.

(It rather sounds as if Kahl never saw the creature himself, but based his own illustration on Andrussowa's?)

If I had to place a bet on Rogelio's creature, I'd put my money on some species of Hemicycliostyla...but I'd rather just say "Urostylid."

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:41 am

Thank you very much all for your comments,

Bruce, I do not have words to say the happy and thankful that I am with all your super detailed comments about all the specimen that I have been posting for ID, thank you very much.

Rogelio

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:37 am

Your super-detailed images make attention to detail a pleasure.

I wish I could provide more help with the genus. Still, it is better to be vague than to add another misleading picture to Google Images, eh? I note that even Foissner -- a colossus of ciliate diversity! -- often puts qualifiers such as "possibly," "probably" and "sp." under his photos.

koodoce · Post by **koodoce** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:49 pm

muy buenas las fotografias

saludos

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:09 am

koodoce,

Gracias por tus comentarios.

Rogelio