eats alga

Description:

Chlamydodon (clam-ee-doe-don), alga-eating hypostome like many other hypostome ciliates, eats filamentous bacteria - such as filamentous blue green algae. They make contact with the filament, move along up and down until they find an end. They then tip over, pushing the end of the filament into the mouth - a cylindrical structure supported by a palisade of microtubular rods . They then start to suck the filament into the cell. As it hits the posterior margin, the cell is deformed by the stiff filament. The food is stunningly quickly degraded and begins to break and fold so that the cell can pull in a filament very much longer than itself. Yum. Phase contrast.