portrait

Description:

Frontonia (front-own-ee-a) is a peniculine ciliate and as such is closely related to the familiar Paramecium. The mouth is supported by strong rods which assists Frontonia in ingesting its preferred food - diatoms and other moderate sized algae. A diatom can be seen inside the cell. The mouth is located at about 10 o clock. Like many peniculines the cell has many extrusomes lying just under the cell surface, and these are expelled when the cells are challenged. Large grey area is the nucleus. Phase contrast.