Chaetophora is a branched filamentous alga almost wholly embedded in mucilage. The shown forms pads which can grow large enough to be visible to the naked eye as green, jelly globes adhered to stones or plants. The mucilage is a protection against . On the surface of this jelly globes one can see a lot of colorless cells formed as hairs (chaetae) projecting out of the jelly. This cells contain no s and serve for uptake.
The bright field photo doesn´t display the mucilage. This young specimen showed only two projecting cells (see inset). The arrow idicates a within a .
Collected from Bodden, the brackish waters lying between the isles of Hiddensee and Ruegen (German Baltic Sea). This image was taken using Zeiss Universal with Olympus C7070 CCD camera.
For permission to use of (high-resolution) images please contact postmaster@protisten.de.
Wolfgang Bettighofer, www.protisten.de.
