Name That Bug # 2

The first installment of "Name That Bug" seems to have passed rather smoothly, so I think it's time for another. Bit harder this time (maybe), but because I'm a nice guy I'll give you part of the original figure caption as a clue of sorts.


Composite drawings based on silver nitrate and protargol impregnation.


Update: Solution now available here. Image from Kozloff (1992).
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19 comments:

  1. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 17:55

    A metazoan!

    Oh, do we need to be more specific? I'm on it then... =P

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  2. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 17:59

    Wait a sec, just noticed scalebar... this is getting interesting!

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  3. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 18:43

    Could it be something like Meloidogyne (tiny nematode)?

    I've no idea how silver nitrate looks/what it does in multicellular contexts though...

    Doesn't really look like Haplozoon... ("Unikont" or bikont, that is the question...at least I'm pretty sure it's a eukaryote!)

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  4. Christopher Taylor30 October 2009 at 18:48

    Not Meloidogyne, definitely not Haplozoon (which doesn't have true cell divisions).

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  5. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 19:07

    Is it at least a parasite of sorts?

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  6. Christopher Taylor30 October 2009 at 19:35

    It is indeed a parasite of some kind.

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  7. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 19:56

    Am I at least not spending time in vain trying to key out nematodes on 4h of sleep?

    Also, the intelligent designer must fucking HATE taxonomists. Srsly. That's why he, in his infinite wisdom, created the nematodes...

    They all, with barely any exceptions, seem to look like...tiny non-descript worms. Holy shit. Wow. (protists are waaaay easier to key out. True story.)


    Would you happen to have a micrograph of this thing on hand?

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  8. Dave30 October 2009 at 20:34

    Looks like a parasitic algae. It must be a rhodophyte if that's a tetraspore on the lower left side. We have several algae in Hawaii that look like that under a microscope (have a cortex with 4-8 large cells surrounding the medulla).

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  9. Psi Wavefunction30 October 2009 at 21:02

    My first thought was 'rhodophyte' but the thing at 15 confused me, and then I began questioning whether or not silver nitrate emphasised cell outlines or some specific type of tissue or hell-knows what... (I've only seen its effects in unicellular organisms)

    So much for the nematode idea. Anyway, I really shouldn't be doing this on 4h of sleep, at 3am...

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  10. Christopher Taylor31 October 2009 at 02:55

    Ah, it's good to be evil. A few more clues:

    (1) It's an animal (so alga is out).

    (2) The silver nitrate treatment is to show cell boundaries.

    (3) The protargol treatment shows kinetosomes. If you look very closely, you'll see that a posterior ring of cilia would have encircled each tier of cells.

    I do have some light micrographs, but only as a photocopy (so by the time I scan them into a computer, they'll be pretty poor). The paper this comes from is not yet available online, I'm afraid.

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  11. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 04:53

    Not related to the picture but this is the awesomest worm 'face' I've ever seen: http://tolweb.org/onlinecontributors/app?page=ViewImageData&service=external&sp=5684

    There needs to be a polychaete pageant sometime...

    And holy shit the intelligent designer was definitely on acid: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3023/2359172254_2782bb7438.jpg

    I shall come upon a small worm eventually (maybe)...

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  12. Sven DIMilo31 October 2009 at 09:11

    hmmmm, toughie.
    I thought nematode at first, then hydroid tentacle, except then I noticed the whole animal is shown. That's a pretty simple little critter and I'm going to guess a myxozoan (which I believe are degenerate cnidarians).

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  13. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 10:32

    An Orthonectid?
    http://www.zin.ru/BioDiv/allphyl1.htm
    5th row =D

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  14. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 10:40

    So basically, a ciliate multicellular apicomplexan? =P

    http://zahav.elementy.ru/genbio/synopsis?artid=193&chapter=1844111

    ok, I'll stop abusing my first language privileges about now =P

    (it's very nice that where I come from, people seem to actually be very interested in various obscure small creature; less biomed kinda frees up researchers to pursue real science... >_>)

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  15. Christopher Taylor31 October 2009 at 11:27

    An Orthonectid?

    Anyone care to be more specific? :)

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  16. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 13:05

    Oh, my VERY last comment didn't go through, I even found a paper with a similar looking thing >.< (and now I'm at another computer)

    Ciliocincta:
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/3277921?seq=3

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  17. Christopher Taylor31 October 2009 at 14:48

    Ciliocincta would be my choice if I was going to pick something as close as possible to being right without actually being right.

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  18. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 18:44

    I would look further but right now I'm being driven insane by my lack of access to most orthonectid literature! Zoology seems to be overflowing with defunct obscure journals nobody really bothers providing subscriptions for...

    Grrr. cat.inist.fr needs to get hacked and defaced ASAP, srsly... fucking HATE that page! It's the symbol for "O HAI, you found exactly what you're looking for but we're not actually gonna let you look at it. LULz. Sucks to be you! =P" [/rant]

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  19. Psi Wavefunction31 October 2009 at 19:24

    * Rhopaluridae
    o Ciliocincta +
    o Intoshia +
    o Rhopalura +
    o Stoecharthrum + (eol.org)
    So no Ciliocincta. Definitely not Rhopalura. Doesn't seem to be Intoshia...

    Stoecharthrum? I literally cannot access a SINGLE image of that thing. Anywhere. On the entire internet. But I'll go ahead and guess that one.

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