Drawing

Description:

Tetradimorpha marina Fenchel et al., 1995. This heliozoan-like organism is almost spherical and most cells measured between 15 and 20 microns in diameter. The spherical nucleus is situated towards one side adjacent to a depression in the cell surface, from the bottom of which either two or four flagella arise. Cells with four flagella might represent early division stages, but there was no correlation between the number of flagella and cell diameter. About twenty axopodia with extrusomes radiate from the cell. The cell are packed with spherical food vacuoles containing bacteria and the surrounding cytoplasm is filled with rod-shaped (~ 1 microns) organelles or endosymbiotic bacteria. The cells are capable of absorbing the axopodia and of transforming into a slug-like flagellated form.