Today I was working on a large saline lake in the delta area of the Netherlands, it is a funny place with very typical species, really different from the rest of the delta.
(https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/pictures003/121502_13974362.jpg)
It looks like Gonyaulax polygramma, but as always in this place they look slightly different from everywhere else, considerable smaller (this one 20 um width) and the large spine is also not very typical. Fun place for us in any case.
Then I came across this splitting couple:
(https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/pictures003/121502_24866514.jpg)
And this is different, it is proper division unlike that Scrippsiella before that just burst out of his jacket at the weakest point.
(https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/pictures003/121502_45251306.jpg)
It doesn't really look nice, after iodine preservation and a bleaching with thiosulphate I admit.
But if you check the fluorescently stained theca, you can see how controlled the break is over the entire half of the cell. Even the girdle lists are still intact.
One end gets the horn, the other the spine. This kind of division is specific for a group of armored dinollagellates, it's called desmoschisis.
(https://www.mikroskopie-forum.de/pictures003/121502_23042882.jpg)
Greetings, René
hi René,
These images are the first ones I´ve seen to show the cell division of an armoured dinoflagellate. Up to now I never was aware of the problem how to allocate the plates to the daughter cells. While the first one is very spectacular demonstrating the plates, the last image is a very impressing document of the desmoschisis. So I could learn something new! Thanx for showing!
best regards Michael Plewka