Zooflagellates and Choanoflagellates

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Zooflagellates and Choanoflagellates

• By Maddy Smith

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Basic Facts-Zooflagellates

• Unicellular (few are colonial)
• Spherical or elongated bodies
• Central nucleus
• Whiplike flagella for movement
• Some engulf food using pseudopoda, others have
  defined mouths

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Nutrition

• Heterotrophic
• Ingest living or dead organisms OR absorb
  nutrients from dead/decomposing organic matter
• Free-living or endosymbionts
• Trichonymphs live in guts of termites and
  cockroaches (mutualism)
• Have special enzymes for digesting cellulose (in
  endosym. Instances)

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Relationships

• Can be parasitic and pathogenic
• Trypanosoma- human parasite which causes African
  sleeping sickness
• Diplomonad zooflagellate with one or two nuclei,
  no mitochondria, 1-4 flagella
• Giardia intestinalis common contaminate in
  mountain streams

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Choanoflagellates Phylum Zoomastigina
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Facts

• Water-dwellers marine and freshwater
• Free-swimming or sessile (permanently attached by
  a thin stalk to debris)
• Single flagellum surrounded at base by collar of
  microvilli