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Clockwise from top right: Amoeba proteus, Actinophrys sol, Acanthamoeba sp., Nuclearia thermophila., Euglypha acanthophora, neutrophil ingesting bacteria. An amoeba (/ ə ˈ m iː b ə /; less commonly spelled ameba or amœba; pl.: amoebas (less commonly, amebas) or amoebae (amebae) / ə ˈ m iː b i /), [1] often called an amoeboid, is a type of cell or unicellular organism with the ability ...
Amoeba is a genus of single-celled amoeboids in the family Amoebidae. [2] The type species of the genus is Amoeba proteus , a common freshwater organism, widely studied in classrooms and laboratories.
Amoebozoa is a major taxonomic group containing about 2,400 described species of amoeboid protists, [8] often possessing blunt, fingerlike, lobose pseudopods and tubular mitochondrial cristae. [7] [9] In traditional classification schemes, Amoebozoa is usually ranked as a phylum within either the kingdom Protista [10] or the kingdom Protozoa.
A protist (/ ˈ p r oʊ t ɪ s t / PROH-tist) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, land plant, or fungus.Protists do not form a natural group, or clade, but are a polyphyletic grouping of several independent clades that evolved from the last eukaryotic common ancestor.
In protists, all-or-none action potentials occur almost exclusively in association with ciliary membranes, [100] [101] [102] with the exception of some non-ciliated diatoms. [ 103 ] [ 104 ] Graded potentials occur in amoebae , also for movement control.
Amoeba proteus is a large species of amoeba closely related to another genus of giant amoebae, Chaos. As such, the species is sometimes given the alternative scientific name Chaos diffluens. [1] [2] Amoeba proteus in locomotion. This protozoan uses extensions called pseudopodia to move and to eat smaller unicellular organisms.
The term continues to be used in a loose way to describe single-celled protists (that is, eukaryotes that are not animals, plants, or fungi) that feed by heterotrophy. [9] Traditional textbook examples of protozoa are Amoeba , Paramecium , Euglena and Trypanosoma .
From the Greek akantha (spike/thorn), which was added before "amoeba" (change) to describe this organism as having a spine-like structure (acanthopodia). This organism is now well known as Acanthamoeba, an amphizoic, opportunistic, and nonopportunistic protozoan protist widely distributed in the environment. [28]