Kamera lens

Kamera lens is a unicellular, flagellate organism and the only species of its genus Kamera. Though the species is known for centuries, it is poorly understood. Its systematic position within the Eukaryota is unsure.

Anatomy, nutrition and reproduction

Kamera lens is a free-living, swimming, [1]) and ovate, the base of its both long flagella is below the tip (subapical). A bag or rim at this place is missing. There is only one nucleus.^[1] Ultrastructural characters are not known.^[2]

Kamera lens lives as a saprobiont^[1] and can be found in hay infusions too. William Saville Kent reported spore-masses of it in such an infusion in 1880.^[3]

Taxonomy and history

The first valid description (as Monas lens) has been published by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1773.^[4] William Saville Kent placed it 1880 in the genus Heteromita.^[3] Edwin Klebs moved it to Bodo in 1892, but this was rejected by H.M. Woodcock, who separated the species 1916 as Heteromastix lens in a genus of its own.^[1] His insufficient description has been updated by David J. Patterson and Michael Zölffel in 1991, who named the genus Kamera, playing on words with the surviving species epithet.^[2] Due to lacking ultrastructural or molecularbiological data the species' rank is uncertain, thus it is placed as incertae sedis in the Eukaryota.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} H. M. Woodcock: Observations on Coprozoic Flagellates: Together with a Suggestion as to the Significance of the Kinetonucleus in the Binucleata, In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Vol. 207, 1916, p. 395-397
2. ^ ^{a b} David J. Patterson, Naja Vors, Alastair G.B. Simpson, Charles O. Kelly: Residual Free-Living And Predatory Heterotrophic Flagellates In: Residual Free-Living And Predatory Heterotrophic Flagellates In: Illustrated Guide to the Protozoa, 2nd Edition. Vol. 2, Society of Protozoologists, Lawrence, Kansas 2000, ISBN 1-891276-23-9, p. 1302-1328.
3. ^ ^{a b} William Saville Kent: A manual of the infusoria, including a description of all known flagellate, ciliate, and tentaculiferous protozoa, British and foreign and an account of the organization and affinities of the sponges, Vol. 1, 1880, p. 135-142
4. ^ Otto Friedrich Müller: Vermivm Terrestrium Et Fluviatilium, Seu Animalium Infusoriorum, Helminthicorum Et Testaceorum, Non Marinorum, Succincta Historia, Vol. 1, Ps. 1, Leipzig 1773, p. 26