Pleodorina
Encyclopedia
In taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy
Alpha taxonomy is the discipline concerned with finding, describing and naming species of living or fossil organisms. This field is supported by institutions holding collections of these organisms, with relevant data, carefully curated: such institutes include natural history museums, herbaria and...

, Pleodorina is a genus of colonial green algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

, specifically of the Volvocaceae
Volvocaceae
The Volvocaceae are a family of unicellular or colonial biflagellates, including the typical genus Volvox. The family was named by Ehrenberg in 1834, and is known in older classifications as the Volvocidae.- Description :...

. Description by Gilbert M. Smith (1920, pp 96-97).

Pleodorina Shaw 1894:

Colonies always motile; spherical to sub-spherical, with 32-128 cells lying some distance from one another just within the periphery of the homogeneous, hyaline, gelatinous, colonial envelope and not connected by cytoplasmic strands. Cells differentiated into those that are purely vegetative in character and those capable of dividing to form daughter colonies. All but four cells of the colony reproductive or about half reproductive and half vegetative. Cells spherical to ovoid in shape. Vegetative cells with a cup-shaped chloroplast containing one pyrenoid; a large anterior eyespot; two cilia of equal length with two contractile vacuoles at their base. Reproductive cells at first like the vegetative cells, later with a more massive chloroplast that eventually contains several pyrenoids. The eyespot and cilia of reproductive cells disappearing when they are mature.


The young colonies of Pleodorina look very much like those of Eudorina
Eudorina
In taxonomy, Eudorina is a genus of colonial green algae, specifically of the Volvocaceae. Eudorina colonies consist of 32 individual cells grouped together. Each individual cell contains flagella which allow the colony to move as a whole when the individual cells beat their flagella together...

(Smith, 1920, p 97.)

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Scientific databases

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