portrait

Description:

Bodo (beau-dough), a genus of kinetoplastid flagellates. Traditionally regarded as being very widespread and numerous, but this was at a time when most small free-living flagellates were assigned to the genus Bodo. Bodonids have two flagella inserting into a small pocket, the presence of which is suggested by the dent in the right anterior margin of the cell. This is Bodo saltans, which is atypical of most species in the genus because cells attach to the substrate by the tip of the recurrent flagellum, and they filter feed somehow using the anterior flagellum which is directed towards the back of the cell. The white region is the contractile vacuole, and this released its content into the adjacent flagellar pocket, not visible in this image. Phase contrast.