INTRODUCTION

DIRECTIONS

HOURS & FEES

LATIN & GREEK

CONTACT US

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 CHAPTER ONE: MICRONS AND PARAMECIA
How do we measure really tiny things? For example, how would you measure the dot
underneath the question mark at this end of this sentence? It’s pretty small. If you put a ruler
next to it, you’d find that centimeters or inches would be far too large. You’d have to estimate in
fractions, making it very difficult to be accurate.
The smallest lines on this ruler are millimeters. (A millimeter is 1/1000 of a meter. A meter
is about as tall as an adult’s waist.) As you can see, there are ten millimeters in a centimeter.
(In other words, a millimeter is a 1/10 of a centimeter.) A millimeter would be a better measuring
unit to use than a centimeter, but let’s be honest — even a millimeter is still pretty big in comparison
to that little dot. Is the dot half a millimeter? A fourth? A tenth? It’s hard to tell. You’d need a
magnifier to get a good estimate. And even then, you’d be taking a guess.
?

Looks like we need a unit of measurement smaller than a millimeter. How small should it
be, and what should we call it? We could divide a millimeter into even smaller units, like tenths
or hundredths or thousandths. Dividing it into tenths might allow us to measure that dot fairly
accurately, but what about even smaller things? What if we wanted to measure a bacteria?
Scientists decided to divide the millimeter into 1,000 smaller units called micrometers.
This makes sense because you will need a microscope to see things that are measured in
micrometers. Now what about an abbreviation? “Millimeters” is abbre-
viated as mm: “m” for “milli” and “m” for “meter.” If we used the same
method for micrometers, we come up with... mm. Oops. We can’t have
two measurements with the same exact letters. We won’t be able to
keep them straight. What to do?

Zeus to the rescue! (Well, not really. Just the ancient Greeks.)
The Greeks had basically the same alphabet as we do, but some of the
letters looked just a little different. For example, their letter “m” in the
Zeus was the king of all the mythological Greek gods
lower case looked like this: μ (It might look a “u” but it is an “m” and and goddesses. He has no connection to the words
they called it “mu.”) If we use the Greek m, we can still use “mm” for micrometer or micron. But he did know Poseidon.

micrometer, but it will look like this: μm. That way we won’t get it mixed
up with the mm that stands for millimeter. When we see “μm” we’ll say “micrometer.” Or, even
better, we could use a shorter and easier word that means the same thing. How about micron?
So, how big is a micrometer (a micron)? To get your mind around how small these units
are, put your finger and thumb so that they are almost touching, but don’t let them actually touch.
That tiny space is a millimeter — one of those little increments on the ruler above. There are
1,000 microns in that little space. Many bacteria are only one micron in diameter. That means that
you could fit a string of 1,000 bacteria into that space!

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You, the reader, have a copy of their guide book, located after the last chapter of this book.

Take a quick look at the guidebook. You’ll see that it has basic information arranged in a very structured format. The
guidebook will come in handy when you need to find basic facts quickly. For example, if you are doing an activity and
need to compare sizes or feeding behaviors, the guidebook will be much easier to use than this text. (If you would like
to print additional copies of the guidebook, you can download and print by going to www.ellenjmchenry.com and click-
ing on FREE DOWNLOADS, then on MICROBIOLOGY, then on PROTOZOA GUIDEBOOK.)

The Paramecium was probably the very first protozoan to be discovered. The Dutch
scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek saw these in his simple microscope in the late 1600s. Then,
in 1718, a French scientist named Louis Jablot (Zhah-blo)
published a description of a little “animal” he had found in
a drop of water. Jablot called this creature a “chausson”
(sho-SOHN) meaning “slipper” because its shape does
look a bit like a slipper. The name stuck, and this creature
was referred to as the “slipper animacule” for the next two
hundred years. Jablot’s drawing of the “little slipper”
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The official name, “Paramecium,” was created in 1752 by English scientist John Hill, using the
Greek word “paramekes” meaning “oblong.” Hill used this term to describe any microscopic
creature that had no fins, legs, tails, or any other visible appendages. Few people actually used
this term, however, and continued to use the very cute nickname “little slipper.”

In 1773, a Danish scientist named Otto Müller changed the spelling to “Paramoecium.”
Then, in 1838, a German scientist decided to change the spelling back to “Paramecium,” and
that is what we still use today. In future chapters, we will see other places
where scientists have disagreed about how to spell words. The fight about
whether to use “oe” or just “e” will show up again soon. Strangely, in some
cases, the “oe” is still with us, though in very recent times there has been an
effort to standardize spelling and get rid of “oe” once and for all. But enough
about that for right now... back to Paramecia. (Paramecia is the plural form
of Paramecium. One Paramecium, two Paramecia.)

What are these strange creatures? Even though they look and act
like little animals, they are not in the animal kingdom. To be a part of the
animal kingdom, you have to be multicellular, meaning made of many cells. Muller’s drawing of Paramecia
The Paramecium is made of only one cell, so it is unicellular. It doesn’t have skin cells or blood
cells or neurons or any of the specialized cells that animals do. It is just one cell. However, this
one cell is very much alive and does many things you do every day: move, find food, eat, digest,
take in oxgen, expel waste, move away from uncomfortable situations, defend itself, and even
communicate with others of its species. How does it accomplish all of these things without any
organs such as muscles, stomach, heart, lungs, brain or kidneys?

Let’s take an up-close look at the anatomy of a Paramecium. One nice thing about
studying protozoa is that they are transparent. You don’t have to cut them open to see inside.
A Paramecium doesn’t have skin, but it does have an outer layer called a pellicle. The
word pellicle comes from the Latin word “pellicula” meaning “skin” or “husk.” If you’ve ever
“husked” corn, you’ve peeled off what the Latin-speaking
Romans would have called a pellicle: a protective layer
designed to cover something important inside.
The pellicle is very thin (less than a micron) but has
several layers. The inner layers are made of a substance that
is tough but flexible. The body of the Paramecium needs to
hold its shape, but it must also be able to bend and twist so it
can get out of tight spots.
The outermost layer is an extremely thin membrane
(only two molecules thick!) that acts like a fence, or screen,
all around the cell. It keeps large molecules from entering the
cell, but will allow tiny molecules, such as water and oxygen, to leak through. (Large molecules
that are helpful can be brought in at places that act as gates.) This type of membrane (often
called a plasma membrane) is found not just in protozoa but in all living cells. Every cell in your
body is surrounded by a plasma membrane.

The Paramecium has openings in its pellicle, just like you

have openings at various places in your body where there is a
hole that leads to the interior: mouth, nose, ears, and... some
“exits” at your posterior end. Posterior means your bottom
part. Anterior means your top part. (“Post” is Latin for “after”
and “ante” is Latin for “before.”) Your head is located at the
anterior region of your body. If you want a polite way to refer to
your bottom, you can call it your posterior.

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 The Paramecium’s anterior isn’t a head. It does not have eyes
or ears or a brain or anything that you would recognize as part of
a head. What makes scientists consider one of its ends as the
anterior is that when it swims, a Paramecium will generally move
in the direction of its anterior end, as if it were a fish or snake or
something that moves headfirst.
Paramecia also spiral as they swim forward.

Another similarity between your skin and a Paramecium’s outer covering is that they both
have hairs. The Paramecium’s hairs are called cilia. This word comes from Latin and means
“small hairs or eyelashes.” (The singular is cilium. One cilium, two cilia. Just like Paramecium
and Paramecia.) The Paramecium can move its cilia like little arms or fins, propelling itself
through the water. The cilia are hard to see, though, unless you have a microscope with very
high magnification. If you are lucky enough to have an extremely powerful (and extremely
expensive) kind of microscope called a scanning electron microscope (SEM), you can look at
the surface texture and see all the cilia.
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) uses electrons to “see” instead of light. You
don’t look into an electron microscope; the chamber is all sealed up. The microscope bounces
electrons off the sample, causing the electrons to go flying off at various angles. The electrons
then hit a screen where they are recorded. The pattern of all these millions of hits on the screen
eventually makes a picture that looks three-dimensional. The drawback to this method is that
you can’t see anything inside the Paramecium. You only see
the surface texture. So it really takes both regular microscopes
and electron microscopes to give us an accurate understanding
of what a Paramecium is like. If you see just one or the other,
you miss important visual information.

The Paramecium moves its cilia using the same basic

chemical process that your muscles use. Movement is caused
by chemical changes (usually a sudden increase in calcium). This
chemical change causes protein chains in the cilia to contract.
An SEM image showing the surface texture

The motion of the cilia is surprisingly similar to how we use our arms to swim. There is a
forward “power” stroke that propels the body, then a weak “reset” stroke where the cilia (or arms)
are brought back to their original position. The Paramecium can swim backwards, too, if it needs
to. If it bumps into something it can back up, turn, then try going forward in a new direction.
A Paramecium’s swimming motion looks very smooth. The cilia don’t all beat at once;
they take turns in a very orderly fashion to create waves of motion. Beating cilia might look a bit
like a gust of wind blowing over a field of tall grass. If you’d like to see Paramecia swimming,
Activity 1.1 gives directions for accessing links to videos of Paramecia.

The world’s first microscopes, This is the first microscope to use A modern SEM “electron microscope,”
made by Antony van Leeuwenhoek two lenses, at the top and bottom showing the chamber open. The cham-
in the late 1600s. of the tube. It is from the 1700s. ber will be sealed and the air removed.

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 The Paramecium’s pellicle can’t feel things like
your skin does. Your skin is loaded with nerve cells
that sense hot, cold, pain and pressure. The
Paramecium is just one cell so it can’t have nerve
cells. But even without nerve cells it is somehow
able to sense things in its environment. If the
environment around it becomes too hot, cold, acidic,
or toxic, it will try to move to a place that is safer.
A Paramecium also somehow knows
how to search for food, even without a brain
to give it hunger signals or to tell it what to eat.
It “knows” what it can digest: bacteria, algae,
plant cells, and even other ciliated protozoa
(smaller ones). The place where it takes in food
is called the oral groove. (“Oral” comes from
the Latin word root “or-,” meaning “mouth.”)
At the bottom of the oral groove is an
opening which is sometimes referred to as its
mouth. The food goes through this opening into
a short tube called the gullet. The gullet is the
rough equivalent to our throat (esophagus).
At the bottom of the gullet a bubble sort
of thing starts to form, collecting the food. The
more technical word for a bubble inside a cell is a
vacuole.. (You might notice the similarity of this word
to the word “vacuum.” Both words come from the Latin
word “vacuus,” meaning “empty.”) Once this vacuole fills
up, it pinches off from the gullet and goes floating away into
the interior of the cell. While it circulates around the cell,
digestive enzymes will enter the vacuole and break down the food.
This is exactly what happens in your stomach. Your body makes chemicals that break down
your food into tiny bits that your cells can absorb. So the food vacuoles are sort of like little stomachs.
The digested nutrients leak out of the vacuoles into the cellular fluid, called the
cytoplasm. (“Cyto” comes from the Greek word “kytos” meaning “container,” while “plasm” is
from the Greek word “plasma” meaning “something molded or formed.” The word plastic is also
related to the word “plasma.” Plastic is definitely able to be molded and formed into things.) The
cytoplasm is a jelly-like substance made mostly of water. All cells, including every cell in your
body, is filled with cytoplasm. Dissolved gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide float around
freely in the cytoplasm, as do small nutrients such as glucose (a sugar).

Notice that the Paramecium has an exit pore where it can get rid of waste. This is
somewhat similar to the exit at the end of your digestive system, although not nearly as
complicated. The Paramecium’s exit is basically a vacuole that opens to the outside.
A Paramecium is constantly taking in food. As soon as one food vacuole fills up and
pinches off from the gullet, a new one starts to form. A Paramecium may have many food
vacuoles floating around inside. The cilia along the oral groove
sweep food down toward the gullet. Along with the food, water gets
swept in, too. This constant sweeping motion brings lots of extra
water into the cell. The Paramecium needs a way to get rid of the
extra water. It does not have kidneys or a bladder, but it does have
two contractile vacuoles. They are easy to spot because they are
star-shaped, with arms radiating out from a central circle. The arms
gather the extra water and bring it to that central circle, which then The contractile vaculole contracts (shrinks) suddenly,
acts like a pump, pushing the water back outside of the cell. forcing water out the circular part in the middle.

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 A Paramecium needs oxygen, just like you do. You require lungs to get oxygen
from your environment. A Paramecium can simply take oxygen right out of the water
around it. It doesn’t even need gills like a fish does. Oxygen molecules are so small
that they can leak through the membrane and the pellicle. (When tiny particles go
across a barrier, this is called diffusion.) Oxygen diffuses into the Paramecium and
floats around in the cytoplasm. Like all of our cells, the Paramecium makes carbon
dioxide as a waste product. We breathe out carbon dioxide when we exhale. In a
Paramecium, the carbon dioxide goes right through the outer membrane, out into the
surrounding water.
A Paramecium does not need lungs, nor does it need a heart or a system of
veins and arteries. We need these things because we are large organisms and have many cells
deep inside our bodies, far away from sources of oxygen. Oxygen must be transported to all
of our cells. A Paramecium is so small that diffusion is good
enough — no need for any transportation!

Four other structures found in all animal, plant and

protozoan cells are mitochondria, ribosomes, endoplasmic
reticulum (ER) and Golgi bodies. The mitochondria are the
energy-makers of the cell. They take sugar and oxygen and
turn them into energy in the form of ATPs. Ribosomes are
like little factories. They assemble all the parts and products
that the cell needs. (Cell parts are made out of proteins.)
Ribosomes are often found near networks of tubes called
endoplasmic reticulum (ER). These tubes can both make
things and transport things. Some ER looks “rough” because
of the ribosomes all around it. If the ER is not dotted with
ribosomes, it looks “smooth.” The Golgi bodies act like little
packaging and sorting warehouses, or maybe post offices.
They take the proteins made by the ribosomes and make sure
they get delivered to places where they are needed.

If you want to learn a lot more about these cell parts, try the curriculum called Cells by the
author of this book. You can find it on Amazon.com, or by going to www.ellenjmchenry.com. For those
of you who have already read Cells, you may be wondering if the Paramecium has lysosomes and a
cytoskeleton. Yes, it does, but information about these is extremely difficult to find. You have to read post-
graduate-level research papers, and even these are very few and far between. There just isn’t a lot of
information about the normal organelles of a Paramecium.

The endoplasmic reticulum is connected to the nucleus. All cells

have a nucleus. This is where DNA is kept. The DNA is like a library that
contains all the information a cell needs. It has instructions for how to make
and repair all the cell’s parts. Most cells, including yours, have only one large
nucleus. A Paramecium has two nuclei: a large macronucleus and a small
micronucleus. You can see them in this photograph as the large and small
black ovals. The macronucleus is absolutely stuffed full of DNA. For unknown
reasons, it has lots and lots of copies of the same information. It’s like having
multiple copies of the same book in a library. In some cases a macronucleus
can have as many as 800 copies of the same information. Why? There must
be a reason, but researchers have not discovered it yet.
The micronucleus has all the same information as the macronucleus,
but it does not have lots of extra copies, so it can be much smaller. The
micronucleus doesn’t seem to do anything while the cell is going about its
normal daily life. Its only job seems to be allowing the cell to exchange DNA
with another Paramecium before it splits in half.
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 Paramecia aren’t male or female. They have
no gender at all. You can’t say “he” or “she” for a
Paramecium; you have to say “it.” They have no
reproductive parts, so they don’t lay eggs or have
babies. The methods they use for reproduction are
very basic.

A Paramecium can reproduce in two ways:

1) It can simply split in half (making clones of itself), or

2) it can exchange DNA with another Paramecium

before it divides, thus creating new Paramecia that
are not identical to the original (a bit more like children
instead of clones).

The first method — just splitting in half — is called binary fission. (Binary
comes from the Latin root word “bini” meaning “by twos.” Fission is a Latin word
that means “splitting.” So binary fission means splitting in two.) The Paramecium
makes extras of its inner parts, then splits in half. The two new cells are exact
copies of the original one. Then those two new Paramecia can each split in half.
Now we have four. Then those four can split in half, making eight. Eight goes to
sixteen, sixteen goes to thirty-two, and so on. This process can go on for quite
some time, but scientists have discovered that eventually the clones-of-clones-of-
clones-of-clones-of-clones-etc. become weaker and weaker until they are unable
to continue dividing. The process of binary fission “wears out” after about 200 splits.

Researchers guess that each time the

macronucleus makes a copy of itself, tiny
mistakes occur. The mistakes are small, so
it does not make a difference at first. But after about 200
duplications of the DNA, so many mistakes have occurred
that the information starts to be affected. The Paramecium’s
instructions for how to make and fix cell parts are now hard
to understand or are wrong. The cells begin to be unable to
do the processes that they must do to keep themselves alive,
so they die. (The picture to the left shows the molecular
DNA is made of a ladder-shaped string structure of DNA. If those “beads” get mixed up, the
of molecules. Information is stored as information does, too.)
a pattern in the rungs of the ladder.

This is where the micronucleus comes in. The DNA

must be fixed. The fixing process involves trading DNA
with another Paramecium. The Paramecium somehow
knows how to find another Paramecium who also needs
to trade DNA. They line up next to each other, side
by side, and at the place where they touch, their cell
membranes and pellicles dissolve so that cytoplasm
can stream back and forth. (The technical term for this
process is conjugation.) Then the micronucleus of
each Paramecium divides several times (using a process
called meiosis which we are not going to explain right at
this moment because it is a bit complicated). Diagram of what happens Actual photo
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 These divisions create little “half nuclei.” Each Paramecium gives a “half nucleus” to the other.
Then the two “half nuclei” join together to form a new whole. Now each Paramecium has a new
micronucleus, half of which came from the other Paramecium.
Right after this happens, the Paramecium’s old macronucleus dissolves and disappears
forever. The new micronucleus divides and makes a new macronucleus. Thus, the old,
defective DNA is gone and the new combination takes over. The new, revitalized Paramecium
can then start using binary fission again until it wears out after several hundred divisions.

Paramecia can’t bite, but they do have a secret weapon. Attached

to the inside of the pellicle are tiny structures called trichocysts. (“Tricho”
is Greek for “hair” and “cyst” comes from the Greek word “kystis” meaning
“bag or pouch.” So it’s a hair in a bag.) A trichocyst is a bit like a harpoon
tied to a string, all curled up inside a hidden pouch, waiting to spring out
and pierce whatever happens to be in its line of fire. Scientists are still not
totally sure they have figured out all the functions of the trichocysts, but
the Paramecium does seem to use them as weapons. They might also
be used to anchor the Paramecium to something while it feeds. But using
them as weapons is a lot more interesting, so let’s investigate that use.
If the Paramecium gets into a situation where it is threatened by a predator, a chemical
signal (using calcium) can be released thoughout the cell, causing a very rapid chemical change
inside the trichocysts, resulting in the harpoons being launched out at a very high speed. How
effective are these little weapons? Well, to be honest, if the predator is at least as
large as the Paramecium, the harpoons are far from deadly. The predator will likely
be back soon for a second try. In the meantime, though, the Paramecium will have
turned and started swimming as fast as it can in the opposite direction. Retreat is
one of the Paramecium’s primary survial strategies.
Unlike sailors on old-fashioned whaling boats, the Paramecium can’t reel in its
harpoons and reuse them. Once they are fired, that’s it. It would take muscles
to pull the harpoons back, and the Paramecium does not have msucles. Instead,
the cell machinery (the ribosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi bodies,
and other parts) gets busy making a new batch of trichocysts. The old ones are
dissolved and the new ones take their place. This process must go on continually for
the Paramecium to stayed armed.
Trichocysts are very small. A Paramecium has hundreds,
or perhaps thousands, of them, hiding among the cilia.
Because they are so small, and so numerous, they were not
shown on the big diagram on page 9.
Trichocysts can fire
on just one side.
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ACTIVITY 1.1 Watch some videos of real Paramecia

Go to the special channel that was set up for this curriculum at: YouTube.com/TheBasementWorkshop.
Click on “Playlists,” then on “Protozoa.” The videos that go with this chapter will be labeled as Chapter 1.
You’ll see Paramecia swimming, eating, and even firing off their trichocysts.

ACTIVITY 1.2 Comparative anatomy

Can you match the Paramecium part with its equivalent human part? Draw a line between the matches.

Paramecium parts: Human parts:

pellicle mouth
cilia head
oral groove throat
gullet kidneys
anterior stomach
contractile vacuole lungs
food vacuole no equivalent
trichocysts arms and legs
no equivalent skin

ACTIVITY 1.3 Can you answer these questions?

1) This word means “made of more than one cell.” __________________

2) The Greek word “paramekes” means ___________________.
3) For two hundred years, Paramecia were usually called little _______________.
4) A Paramecium’s thick-yet-flexible outer layer is called the _____________.
5) On top of the layer in the previous question, there is a very thin layer called the _________ ___________.
6) Where are your eyes and nose located — on your anterior or your posterior? _______________
7) A Paramecium does not need lungs because oxygen can simply ___________ through its outer layers.
8) Which body part does the Paramecium use to swim? ______________
9) Which body part does the Paramecium use to pump out excess water? _____________ ______________
10) Which body part only becomes active during conjugation? ______________________
11) Parameciua use this method of reproduction most of the time: ____________ ____________
12) Approximately how many times can a Paramecium split in half before it must go through conjugation? ___
13) What does a Paramecium eat? __________________________________________________________
14) The Latin word root “or-” means __________.
15) The Greek word “tricho” means _________.

BONUS QUESTION: Which body part is responsible for generating energy? _________________
SECOND BONUS QUESTION: Which body part sorts things like a post office does? _________________
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ACTIVITY 1.4 ZEUS versus JUPITER, round 1

The Titans have fought over many things, but... vocabulary words? Doubtful. Well, then, this will be a
first for them! The god with the most words wins. (Actually, Zeus and Jupiter were the same deity because
the Romans borrowed Zeus from the Greeks and changed his name to Jupiter, so it’s a “win-win” situation.
The king of the pantheon wins, either way!)
We have listed Greek and Latin word roots found in words in this chapter that are printed in bold italic
type (the words that are darker than the others). The Greek word roots are under Zeus, the king of the Greek
gods, and the Latin word roots are under Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods.
In this first chapter, it looks like Jupiter wins by three words.

Your job in this activity is to figure out which vocabulary words contain these word roots. Look back
through the chapter and find those words in bold type. Write the appropriate vocabulary word (or words) on
each line. (For example, the word “microscope” contains two Greek words: “mikros” and “skopos.” So write
the word “microscope” on the line after “mikros,” and also on the line after “skopos.”)

GREEK LATIN
mikros (small) ___________________ multus (many) _______________
makros (large) ___________________ uni (one) ________________
metron (measure) _________________ bi (two) _____________
protos (first) ________________ ante (before) _______________
zoion (animal) _______________ post (after) __________________
skopos (to watch) ______________ pellicula (husk) _________________
paramekes (oblong) ______________ cilia (hair) ______________
kystis (bag) ___________ or (mouth) ______________
kytos (container) _________________ vacuus (empty) _________________
tricho (hair) ________________ ex (out) __________
plasma (plastic) __________________ porus (passageway) __________________
soma (body) ____________________ fissus (split) ____________
poros (passageway) ______________ con (with) _________________
endon (inside) _______________ jugum (yoke) _______________
mitos (thread) ____________________ mille (1,000) _________________
chondrion (small grain) ___________________ nucula (little nut) ________________
diffusio (to spread out) _____________
gula (throat) _____________
membrana (thin parchment) ______________
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 CHAPTER TWO: MORE CILIATES

Meet Didinium, the tiger of the protozoan world. It’s a carnivore.

(“Carn” comes from Latin and means “flesh or meat.” “Vore” is from the Latin
word “vorare,” meaning “ to eat.”) Didinium kills and eats other ciliates, even
some twice its size, and its favorite meal is a Paramecium. Why it prefers
Paramecium to other ciliates is unknown. It can be forced to eat other things,
but if Paramecia are around, it will go after them first.
Didinia (the plural of Didinium) might look very different from
Paramecia, but they actually are quite similar. Almost everything we learned
about Paramecia is true for Didinia. They have the same cells parts, they
swim through the water using cilia, they reproduce using binary fission and
conjugation, they have food vacuoles and exit pores, and they can fire little
harpoon darts. Drawing by Otto Müller, 1786
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 The two biggest differences between Paramecia and Didinia are the
arrangement of the cilia and the shape of the “mouth.” The Didinium’s
cilia are arranged in two neat rows, one along its “belt line” and one
around the top rim. When it beats these cilia, it spins through the water.
The thing sticking out of the top of Didinium is called the cytostome and
is equivalent to the Paramecium’s oral groove. It is the opening where
the food goes in. (Cytostome is Greek for “cell mouth.”) Yes, that cytos-
tome really stretches! Can you imagine it taking in an animal as large
as the Didinium itself?
That dark “J” in the middle is the macronucleus. All those other
little dots are probably food vacuoles. You can see the exit pore at the
bottom. When this picture was drawn, over 100 years ago, scientists
had no idea what the organelles did. They did not yet know about DNA,
so they really had no clue what the role of the nucleus was.
The Didinium makes specialized trichocysts called toxicysts,
A Didinium drawing from 1896 which contain a toxic (poisonous) substance. The toxic chemicals are
capable of paralyzing the Didinium’s prey. This is part of the reason
Didinium is able to capture prey that is as large, or larger, than itself.
These drawings are from 1909.

100 microns

Didinium “stings” the Paramecium After the Paramecium is still, Didinium A cross section of a Didinium with a
with its toxicyst darts. is able to start ingesting it. half-eaten Paramecium. (Notice the line
that is 100 microns long.)

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 Meet Dileptus, the elephant of the protozo-
an world. (Killer elephant, that is.) Dileptus reminds
many people of an elephant because it is large
and has a long proboscis at its anterior end. (The
word proboscis comes from the Greek words “pro”
meaning “for,” and “boskein” meaning “to feed.” The
Greeks called an elephant’s trunk a “pro-boskis”
meaning “for feeding.”) But you may think Dileptus
looks like something else — a plesiosaurus with no
fins, a leg-less swan, a snake that ate a watermelon?
Drawing by Otto Muller, 1786. He called them “vibrios.”

Dileptus can’t use its proboscis for feeding

in the same way an elephant does. An elephant
uses its trunk almost like we use our arms, hands
and fingers. Dileptus is not nearly as smart as an
elephant, but it does pretty well for a single cell. It
uses its proboscis to injure its prey. Just like Di-
dinium, Dileptus has toxicysts (tiny harpoons with
poison tips). These toxicysts are located primarily
at the base of the proboscis. A toxic smack from
a Dileptus proboscis can completely rupture the
pellicle of most ciliates. As the prey’s cytoplasm and organelles ooze out into the water, Dileptus
starts sucking them up with its “mouth” (cytostome) which is located at the base of the proboscis.
Cilia help to sweep the particles toward the cytosome.
The Dileptus forms food vacuoles, just like Paramecia do. The food vacuoles float around
the cell as digestive chemicals go to work breaking down the food particles into smaller and
smaller pieces. Eventually, the protein, fat, and carbohydrate molecules inside the food vacu-
oles are released into the cytoplasm where they can be used as raw ingredients for manufac-
turing new cell parts for the Dileptus. (If the Dileptus then gets eaten by a larger predator, the
Dileptus’ cell parts will be recycled and used by the animal that ate it. And if that animal then
gets eaten, its parts are recycled. And so it goes, up the food chain, until it reaches the very
largest predator who does not get eaten. But that preda-
tor dies eventually, and then bacteria do the recycling.)
There are about a dozen different types of Dilepti
(one Dileptus, two Dilepti). They are all similar in shape,
but not identical. This picture shows shapes from actual
photographs. What animals to they remind you of? We
think the first one looks like a seahorse. The second one
(on top) looks like a seal, or maybe a baby bird with a
long tail. Seriously, though, can you tell which of these
Dilepti just ate a big meal?
17
 Dileptus looks as if it is filled with tiny circles, like marbles of various sizes. Many of these
circles are vacuoles of various types: food vacuoles, storage vacuoles, and contractile vacuoles.
Paramecium and Didinium had just a few contractile vacuoles. Dileptus has many more. Most
of the contractile vacuoles are lined up in row, along what would be its back if it were a larger
animal. Since Dileptus is only a single cell and doesn’t really have a proper back, that side is
simply called the dorsal side, meaning the side opposite the mouth opening. (The word “dorsal”
shows up a lot when you study animals and it always means something having to do with the
back. Dorsal comes from the Latin word “dorsum” meaning “back.”)

Another notable difference between a Dileptus and a Paramecium is the number of

nuclei. A Paramecium has just one big macronucleus and one small micronucleus. A Dileptus
can have up to 60 or 70 macronuclei and hundreds of micronuclei. Why it has so many is still
a mystery. Do all of the micronuclei play a role in conjugation (trading DNA), as we saw in the
Paramecium? We know that in some ciliates with multiple nuclei, more than one micronucleus is
traded back and forth during conjugation. But no one has ever been able to observe Dilepti for
long enough to determine what happens to all of their micronuclei. (It’s important to remember
that scientists don’t know everything!)

The Dileptus is not the largest ciliate in the pond. There are several well-known ciliates
that can grow to be much larger than a Dileptus. In fact, they are so large that you can see them
without a microscope if you have really good vision. You won’t see any detail, of course. They’ll
just look like a little dot smaller than the head of a pin.

18
 Meet Spirostomum, the mammoth
water snake of the protozoan world. (Its
name comes from the Greek words “spiros”
meaning “spiral,” and “stomum” mean-
ing “mouth.”) Actually, the Spirostomum
doesn’t have much in common with snakes
of any kind — it doesn’t bite, poison, or
squeeze its prey. It’s much less aggressive
than Didinium or Dileptus and does not have trichocysts. It’s more like a hungry swimming tree
trunk. Its lifestyle is fairly similar to that of the Paramecium; it wanders about taking in whatever
bits of food it can find: bacteria, algae, tiny pieces of rotting plants, and small protozoa.
The most notable feature of the spirostomum is the
stripy pattern on one end. This is the posterior end (the
“tail”). The stripes are sort of like muscle fibers and they
run the whole length of the animal even though you can
only see them in this posterior region. (They are called
myonemes, for those of you who like to know the proper
names for things.) The reason you can see them here is
that at the posterior end is a giant vacuole (a contractile
vacuole that expels water). This vacuole is fairly transpar-
ent (“see-through”) so you can see the myonemes.

The cytostome (“mouth”) is very hard to see because it is simply a small slit in the ante-
rior end. It is similar to the oral groove and gullet of the Paramecium. The cytostome does not
stretch like the Didinium’s, so the Spirostomum can’t possibly eat anything super large.

A very noticeable feature inside the Spirostomum is the

string of macronuclei, all joined together like a string of beads.
Some scientists say it is just one really long nucleus pinched
off into smaller pieces. It makes sense for the Spirostomum
to have a very long nucleus because, as you will remember,
it is the DNA in the nucleus that provides information to the
cell’s organelles. If the nucleus was only at one end, the poor
organelles at the other end would be far away from the source
of information, making it very hard for them to do their jobs.

The Spirostomum uses binary fission as its primary method of reproduction. Like all
ciliates, it also uses conjugation once in a while, whenever it feels its DNA is getting “worn out”
and needs to be traded. Trading DNA revitalizes and renews them.

The Spirostomum does not usually wriggle back and forth like a
snake. It glides smoothly through the water using rows of cilia so small that
you can’t see them without very high magnification. It can change direction
easily and quickly without turning around. Spirostomum starts its cilia going
in the opposite direction and it moves backwards. Even though it usually
stays straight, it can bend if it needs to and is capable of making a U shape.

Spirostomum’s claim to fame is that it can contract its body down

to about one fourth of its original size in a fraction of a second (1/200 of a
second). No other living cell can contract faster than a Spirostomum. The
contraction happens whenever the Spirostomum is startled. In the lab, you
can make them contract by gently tapping the microscope slide.

Is the Spirostomum the biggest protozoa in the pond? Turn the page and find out.
19
 Meet Loxodes (locks-OH-dees), the whale of the protozoan world. It’s most similar to a
baleen whale because although it is very large it eats small things. Baleen whales eat a diet of
microscopic plankton. Loxodes eats bacteria, algae, and tiny protozoa. Those large circles you
see in the drawing of Loxodes are food vacuoles filled with tiny food particles. Those guys in the
boat aren’t in much danger of being eaten. They’re probably too large.
Loxodes is a ciliate, just like the others we’ve met, so you already know all the basics
about it — how it swims (cilia), how it digests (food vacuoles), and how it reproduces (binary
fission and conjugation). Loxodes is different from other ciliates in two respects, however. The
first is that it does not have any contractile vacuoles. The second is that it has a special type of
organelle that helps it know which way is “up.” You can see a string of these organelles in the
picture above. They look like perfectly round fried eggs lined up in a row. They are called Müller
bodies, named after Otto Müller, the guy from the 1800s that we met back on page 6 when he
wanted to spell Paramecium with an “o” (paramoecium). He also did the drawing of the Didinium
on page 15 and the drawing of the Dilepti on page 17.

The Müller bodies allow the Loxodes to sense gravity. They

work a little bit like the cells in your inner ear, which let you sense
the tilt of your head. Even with your eyes closed, you know if your
head is level or is tipped forward or backward. The little inset pic-
ture shows how the dark blob in the middle of the organelle is sus-
pended by a thin protein thread. It’s like a ball on a string. Imagine
rotating that circle clockwise. What would happen to the position of
the ball? It would go toward one side, wouldn’t it? When the inner
part of the Müller body migrates toward one side of the circle, chem-
ical and electrical changes take place around it.
Why would Loxodes need to sense gravity? The best guess so far is that it needs to mi-
grate to areas of less oxygen. Loxodes doesn’t like too much oxygen. When there is too much
oxygen near the surface, Loxodes takes a dive.

It’s easy to tell which end of Loxodes is the anterior end, since it is pointy-looking,
sort of like a beak. It is called the rostrum, which is Latin for “beak.” It’s not really a
beak, of course. It just reminds us of one because of its general shape. The mouth
opening is very small and is located right under the rostrum, just where you would put
the mouth if you were making a cartoon Loxodes. (We added a cartoon eye, too!)

So... is Loxodes the largest ciliate? (Okay, okay, you’ve already looked at the next page. )
20
 Meet Stentor, the living trumpet. It is named after an
ancient Greek who was known for his loud voice. He was a
herald (announcer) in the Greek army. Supposedly, the voice
of Stentor was louder than the combined voices of 50 men.
Things were fine as long as he remained humble about his
ability. However, as so often hap-
pened in these legends, the mortal got
overly confident about his abilities and
challenged one of the Olympian gods.
Stentor foolishly agreed to a shouting
contest with Hermes, the herald of the
gods. Stentor lost not only his voice,
but his life.
A simple device that can be used to magnify the sound
of your voice (to make you as loud as Stentor was) is a cone-
shaped device called a megaphone. The protozoan Stentor is
the same shape as a megaphone.

The Stentor is a ciliate, just like all the protozoa we’ve met so far. In the next chapter,
we will meet some protozoa who are not ciliates, but so far everyone we’ve met has cilia. The
Stentor has cilia on its body and also along the top rim of its “trumpet.” The cilia along its body
are shorter and are used for swimming. The cilia on the rim are longer and are used for creating
a vortex (whirlpool) in the water, which draws food down. Most often you will find Stentor stand-
ing still. (The fancy word for this is sessile (seh-sill), which means “attached to something and
not swimming around”). The Stentor can attach to any large piece of floating debris, like a twig
or leaf, or a floating clump of algae. It stays there while the supply of food lasts. When it senses
that the food supply is dwindling, it detaches itself and goes off to find a new place to attach.
You can see that Stentor has the same kind of nucleus as Spirostomum. Its looks like
a long string of oval beads. Long protozoa need long nuclei! The blank circle (with a long, thin
tube running down from it) is a contractile vacuole. The Stentor is continually taking in water
and needs a way to pump it back out again. Every few minutes the contractile vacuole reaches
capacity and gives a sudden and strong “squeeze” to expel the water. (The long tube part helps
to collect water from the lower part of the cell.) You can also see lots of food vacuoles.
21
 The V-shaped thing in the middle of the top is the “mouth.” The proper name for it
is the buccal cavity. (You say the word “buccal” exactly like the word “buckle.” So next
time you are required to think of homonyms for an English assignment, you can use this
one and amaze everyone with your knowledge of biology!) The word “buccal” comes
from the Latin word “bucca” meaning “mouth” or “cheek.” The muscle in your cheek
(which lets you draw in your cheeks to make the silly “kissing fish” face) is called the buc-
cinator muscle (buck-sin-a-tor).

As we look at the buccal cavity on the top of Stentor, we need to

understand something very important about the overall shape of the
Stentor. It is very easy to misinterpret drawings and photographs. Most
students get the impression that Stentor is shaped like a hollow cone,
like the drawing on the left. We must assume that the organelles are
somehow embedded in the walls. In reality, the Stentor is not hollow, but
has a top. It is like a full ice cream cone, not an empty one.
WRONG RIGHT
This antique drawing (from over 100 years ago) is perhaps the best
drawing you can find on the Internet. It is the drawing that most clearly
shows that the top is solid, not open. Notice the buccal cavity going into
the cell like a funnel. The contractile vacuole and the macronucleus look
very much like the ones in our cartoon picture on the previous page.

Again, don’t forget that protozoa are transparent (see-through).

The nucleus (even in this very good picture) looks like it is pasted on the
side. It is actually inside the cell, not on the surface.

The skinny part at the bottom is called the peduncle (PED-uncle,

or peh-DUNK-el, take your pick). This word comes from the Latin root
“ped” meaning “foot,” and the Latin ending “unculus” meaning “little.”
(As a brief side note for those of you interested in Latin, this word end-
ing doesn’t mean “small” in the same way that “brevis” and “parvus” do.
Rather, “unculus” is similar to what we do with “y” in English. A grown
man is “Bob,” and his little boy is “Bobby.”)
A Stentor attaches to things using the peduncle. It can secrete a
sticky substance that will hold it in place.

Besides being the largest of the ciliates, the Stentor has

two other characteristics that set it apart from most other protozoa.
First, it can regenerate if it is chopped into pieces. Each piece will
grow into a new Stentor. Some researches claim they have grown
Stentors from pieces as small as 1/100 of an original cell. This is
not only amazing, but technically impossible. Why? Remember
that the cell only “knows” what to do because of the information
stored in its DNA in the nucleus. If it needs new cell parts, the
information for how to make them comes from the DNA. A piece
of Stentor that had a piece of nucleus would have the necessary
information to be able to grow new organelles. But even if you
separate that string of macronuclei into individual beads and give
one to each piece, you still would not have enough for 100 pieces.
How do the pieces without any DNA know what to do? Are there
bits and pieces of DNA floating around in the cell? (If you become
a cell researcher someday, here is a puzzle for you to solve!)
22
 The second somewhat unusual thing Stentor can do is to allow
algae to live and grow inside its body without digesting them. This is
what gives green Stentors their color. It’s the algae that are green, not
the Stentor.
The Stentor takes in algae through the buccal cavity and puts
them into food vacuoles. But somehow or other the algae resist diges-
tion and eventually escape from the vacuoles. They float around in the
Stentor’s cytoplasm, like fish in an aquarium. The Stentor doesn’t mind
a bit; they don’t cause any harm. In fact, they are somewhat helpful. The
algae can take carbon dioxide, one of the waste products that all living
cells make, and
use it for photo-
synthesis, mak-
ing sugars that
both the algae
and the Stentor
can eat. So the
algae sort of
function as both
housekeepers
and cooks!

A protozoan that is very similar to Stentor is Vorticella (vort-i-SELL-ah). If you stretched

a Stentor’s peduncle so that it got very skinny, and you rounded the trumpet into more of a bell
shape, you’d have a Vorticella. They are considered to be closely related.
As with Stentor, when you look at drawings of Vorticella you often get
the wrong impression of its shape. Though it is shaped like an upside down
bell, it is not hollow. The SEM photograph on the right shows the true shape
of the top of the bell. You can’t see this when you look at pictures taken with
a regular light microscope
Vorticella’s claim to fame is its springy
peduncle. It is quite entertaining to watch a
Vorticella under a microscope. The slightest
disturbance startles it, and it suddenly coils
up. A few seconds later, when the coast is
clear, it begins to stretch out again. It’s fun
to tap the microscope slide again and again
and watch Vorticella bounce up and down!
The Stentor, also, can contract its peduncle
quite quickly, but it is not as entertaining to The top of Vorticella’s bell is
watch as the Vorticella’s “spring.” covered; the bell is not hollow.

The mechanism that contracts both Stentor

and Vorticella is very similar to the one found in
Spirostomum. It is called a spasmoneme because
it causes a very fast contraction, or “spasm.” The
Vorticella’s spasmoneme is visible inside the stalk
of the peduncle.
The Vorticella’s peduncle is a bit fragile; it
doesn’t take much to rip it off. The Vorticella can
function well enough without it, though. It can start
swimming around, like Stentor can. Then it can
grow a new peduncle in less than an hour.
23
 Several times we’ve mentioned “smaller protozoa” that get eaten (along with bacteria
and algae) by the larger ciliates such as Spirostomum, Loxodes, and Stentor. Let’s wrap up this
chapter with a look at the smallest members of the ciliate family.
In descending size, our “Top Four” list is:

Euplotes (yu-PLOH-tees): A unique ciliate that not only swims, but “walks.” (“Eu” is Greek for
“good” and “plos” is Greek for “swimmer.”) It is also a picky eater and spends quite a bit of
time sorting out the particles that come into its buccal cavity. It spits out things it does not like.
About 150 μm

Colpidium (cole-PID-ee-um): A very common ciliate found in most ponds. It looks like a
junior version of Paramecium. The name comes from the Greek “kolpos” meaning “gulf.”
Perhaps Copidium’s oral groove area reminded early scientists of a gulf or bay.
About 60 μm

Tetrahymena (tet-rah-HIE-men-ah): Another extremely common ciliate found in many

ponds. This ciliate is a favorite of professional cell researchers. Some major discoveries
about how cells work were made by studying this ciliate. (“Tetra” is Greek for “four,” and
“hymen” is Greek for “membrane.”)
About 50 μm

Halteria (hal-TARE-ee-ah): Perhaps the smallest ciliate of all. It is known for its swimming
speed and its jumping motion. It was named after the weights used by the Greeks in
their version of the long jump event. The weights were called “halteres” and were used to
counterbalance body weight during the jump.
About 30 μm

24
 There’s one last type of ciliate we really must mention because they
are so different from the others. These ciliates form a group called the “Ses-
silida” because they are sessile. (Remember meeting this word back on the
page with the shouting Stentor? It is pronounced (seh-sill) and it means “can’t
move around.”)
The particular member of this group that our heroes have discovered
here is called Epistylis. You can pronounce it (ee-PIST-ill-is) or (EP-ee-STY-
liss). It is almost impossible to find a book or website that tells you how to
pronounce this word, so choose one of these and go with it. Its name comes
from two Greek words: “epi” meaning “upon,” and “stulos” meaning “pillar.”
The cups are attached to “pillars” and can’t move.
These ciliates are very much like Vorticella, except that they do not
have myoneme fibers. The myonemes are the muscle-like fibers that allow Vorticella, Stentor and Spirosto-
mum to contract quickly. The Epistylis lacks these fibers, so it has to find another reason to be special.
25
These illustrations were drawn in the mid-1800s. They show ciliates in the group to which Stentor, Vorticella and Epistylis belong.

Epistylis is a single-celled organism so it is capable of living on its own. Each cell is

a complete unit, with its own gullet, nucleus (or nuclei), contractile vacuoles, food vacuoles,
and other organelles. Technically, it does not NEED other cells. However, it displays colonial
behavior. This means forming protozoan “neighborhoods.” The Epistylis cells permanently bond
to each other, forming an overall tree-like shape. Why they do this is unknown. There must be
an advantage to living this way or they would not do it.
These beautiful illustrations were drawn in the mid-1800s. Scientists had named and
classified thousands of protozoans before the year 1900. Regular “light” microscopes were
pretty good back in the 1800s! At 100x or 400x, they were just as good as the microscopes we
use today. The scientists of the 1800s could see all the organelles and observe the contractile
vacuoles squeezing and refilling. They saw the cilia and the trichocysts. They watched the
protozoa go through binary fission and conjugation. They knew what each species ate, and
what ate them. What they could not possibly know was the structure and function of DNA, and
the molecular processes that go on inside the organelles. This knowledge would only come
in the later part of the 1900s when electron microscopes were becoming widely available,
allowing magnification as high as10,000x. (The discovery of DNA took more than just higher
magnification. A type of imaging called x-ray diffraction was necessary, as well as some
mathematical analysis.) If you’d like to see more illustrations of protozoans from the 1800s, do a
Google search using keywords: “protozoa, Haeckel.”

26
ACTIVITY 2.1 Watch some videos of cilates in action!

Go to the Protozoa playlist on YouTube.com/TheBasementWorkshop and watch all the videos that are
listed for Chapter 2. You will get to see most of the ciliates mentioned in this chapter. There is even a video
of a Didinium devouring a Paramecium!

ACTIVITY 2.2 Comparative anatomy

Can you match the ciliate part with its equivalent human part? Draw a line between the matches. If you
don’t find what you think is an exact match, just choose the best answer available.

Ciliate parts: Human parts:

peduncle mouth
cilia inner ear
dorsal side muscle
This is a Stentor
buccal cavity kidneys going through
myoneme fingers binary fission.
Ciliates always
contractile vacuole nose
divide end to
food vacuole foot end, like this.
Müller bodies stomach
rostrum back

ACTIVITY 2.3 “Who am I?”

Guess which protozoan is giving you each clue. You can use the same answer more than once.

1) If I am cut up into dozens of pieces, I can grow each piece into a whole new body. ____________
2) I can contract my body to 1/4 its normal size in only 1/200 of a second. __________________
3) Paramecia are my favorite snack. ________________
4) I am a good swimmer, but I can also “walk” along surfaces. ________________
5) I am very tiny and jump about like crazy. _____________
6) I bounce up and down on my very thin peduncle, which can look like a spring. ________________
7) I am cup-shaped and colonial. _________________
8) I know which way is “up.” _________________
9) I have a proboscis. ___________________
10) I have a rostrum. _____________________
11) I have two star-shaped contractile vacuoles, and one large macronucleus. __________________
12) I often take in green algae cells which then live happily inside my body for a long time. _____________
13) All my contractile vacuoles are lined up along my dorsal side. ________________
14) I am a favorite of researchers. Many discoveries about cells were made with me. _______________
15) I am long and skinny and do not have any trichocysts. ___________________

Possible answers: Paramecium, Dileptus, Didinium, Loxodes, Spirostomum, Stentor, Vorticella, Epistylis,
Euplotes, Tetrahymena, Halteria
27
ACTIVITY 2.4 ZEUS versus JUPITER, round 2

Here they are, back at it again. Looks like Zeus has the longer list this time. Fill in the blanks below
with the English words that contain these Greek or Latin words. In this round, you will also fill in a few of the
meanings of the Greek and Latin words. (Also, we tossed in a few extra words.)

GREEK LATIN
boskein (to ______) ________________ bucca (mouth or cheek) ______________
di (two or twice) ___________, _____________ carn (________) ________________
dinos (whirling) _________________ dorsum (_________) _____________
epi (upon) ____________________ pedis (_______) _________________
eu (______) ______________ rostrum (_______) _______________
halteres (jumping weights) _____________ sessilis (sitting, to be sat on) ___________
hymen (membrane) ________________ *spira (coil) ______________
kolpos (gulf) _________________ vorare (to _____) _______________
leptus (thin) __________________ vortex (vortex) ______________
plos (swim/swimmer) _______________
pro (____) __________, ______________
*speira (coil) _________________
stoma (_______) ___________, _______________
stulos (pillar) __________________
tetra (______) ___________________
Greek “halteres” jumping weight
toxon (bow that shoots arrows) _________ (pg 16) (carved from stone)

* Notice that you can trace the word “spiral” back to both Latin and Greek.

*************************************************************************
Review: Can you remember the meanings of these Greek words?
1) zoion _______ 4) kystis ________ 7) mitos __________
2) skopos __________ 5) tricho ________ 8) kytos __________
3) soma _________ 6) con ________ 9) protos _________

Possible answers: first, with, hair, animal, to watch, body, bag, thread, container
28