Make drawings showing the colony expanded and contracted.
Fig. 8.—Vorticella sp.;
one individual with
stalk coiled, and one
with stalk extended.
(From life.)
With higher power examine a single individual. Note the thickened, bent-out, upper margin of the bell. This margin is called the peristome. With what is it fringed? The free end of the bell is nearly filled by a central disk, the epistome, with arched upper surface and a circlet of cilia. Between the epistome and peristome is a groove, the mouth or vestibule, which leads into the body. Study the internal structure of the transparent, bell-shaped body. Note the differentiation of the protoplasm comprising the body into an inner transparent colorless endosarc containing various dark-colored granules, vacuoles, oil-drops, etc., and an outer uniformly granular ectosarc not containing vacuoles. Is the stalk formed of ectosarc or endosarc or of both? Note the curved nucleus lying in the endosarc. (This may be difficult to distinguish in some specimens.) Note the numerous large circular granules, the food vacuoles. Note the contractile vesicle, larger and clearer than the food vacuoles. Note the thin cuticle lining the whole body externally. A high magnification will show fine transverse ridges or rows of dots on the cuticle.
Make a drawing showing the internal structure.
Observe a living specimen carefully for some time to determine all of its movements. Note the contraction and extension of the stalk, the movements of the cilia of peristome and epistome, the flowing or streaming of the fluid endosarc (indicated by the movements of the food vacuoles), the behavior of the contractile vesicle.
Make notes and drawings explaining these motions.
Specimens of Vorticella may perhaps be found dividing, or two bell-shaped bodies may be found on a single stem, one of the bodies being sometimes smaller than the other. These two bodies have been produced by the longitudinal division or fission of a single body. In this process a cleft first appears at the distal end of the bell-shaped body, and gradually deepens until the original body is divided quite in two. The stalk divides for a very short distance. One of the new bell-shaped bodies develops a circlet of cilia near the stalked end. After a while it breaks away and swims about by means of this basal circlet of cilia. Later it settles down, becomes attached by its basal end, loses its basal cilia and develops a stalk.