Ancoracysta twista

This article was originally posted at Amazing Zoology. View original article at http://amzoo.in/t88rv

Differential interference contrast microscopy of a cell of Ancoracysta twista. Two flagella, the feeding gullet, nucleus and a posterior digestive vacuole are visible. Image credit: Denis V. Tiknonenkov

Ancoracysta twista is a predatory flagellate that uses its whip-like flagella to propel itself and unusual harpoon-like organelles, called ancoracysts, to immobilize other protists on which it feeds. This protist was discovered by Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego on a brain coral in a tropical aquarium. Thus its geographic origin in the wild is not known.


A. twista does not fit with any known group of organisms. Instead, it appears to belong to an early lineage of eukaryote that was previously unknown. The unusually large number of genes in its mitochondrial genome opens a window into the early evolution of eukaryotic organisms.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What makes poison dart frog resistant to their on poison?

Image
This article was originally posted at Amazing Zoology . View original article at http://amzoo.in/sksq7 © Brian Gratwicke | CC BY 2.0 Contents 1 Poison Dart Frog 2 How is the toxin produced? 3 Physiology of the toxin 4 Why doesn’t the toxin affect the frog itself? 5 References Poison Dart Frog Golden poison frog ( Phyllobates terribilis ) is one of the deadliest poisonous animals in the world. These animals are endemic to the Pacific coast of Colombia. An average one milligram of poison available in one frog is enough to kill 10-20 humans [1] . Indigenous people carefully expose the frog to the heat of a fire, and the frog exudes small amounts of poisonous fluid. The tips of arrows and darts are soaked in the fluid. Their deadly effect kept for over two years [2] . The interesting question is, what makes the frog itself resistant to this deadly poison! How is the toxin produced? These animals store Batrachotoxin, a steroidal alkaloid toxin in their skin glands. This toxin is not ac
Read more

Aye Aye

Image
This article was originally posted at Amazing Zoology . View original article at http://amzoo.in/p15s2 The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow. It is the world’s largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood using its forward slanting incisors to create a small hole in which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. This foraging method is called percussive foraging, and takes up 5–41% of foraging time. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the striped possum. From an ecological point of view the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within. The aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus Daubentonia and family Daubentoniidae. It is currently classified as Enda
Read more