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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 ...
The advantage of the Colonial Theory hypothesis is that it has been seen to occur independently in 16 different protoctistan phyla. For instance, during food shortages the amoeba Dictyostelium groups together in a colony that moves as one to a new location. Some of these amoeba then slightly differentiate from each other.
If there are few food bacteria in that new environment, then the social amoeba are able to seed the area with the contained Burkholderia and thus develop a food source. Farmer amoebas do produce fewer spores in a food rich environment than non-farmer amoebas, but this cost is countered by farmers’ ability to replenish their food supply when ...
Food enveloped by the Amoeba is stored in digestive organelles called food vacuoles. Amoeba, like other unicellular eukaryotic organisms, reproduces asexually by mitosis and cytokinesis. Sexual phenomena have not been directly observed in Amoeba, although sexual exchange of genetic material is known to occur in other Amoebozoan groups. [15]
Amoebozoa includes many of the best-known amoeboid organisms, such as Chaos, Entamoeba, Pelomyxa and the genus Amoeba itself. Species of Amoebozoa may be either shelled (testate) or naked, and cells may possess flagella. Free-living species are common in both salt and freshwater as well as soil, moss and leaf litter.
Trophallaxis: eating food regurgitated by another animal; Zoopharmacognosy: self-medication by eating plants, soils, and insects to treat and prevent disease. An opportunistic feeder sustains itself from a number of different food sources, because the species is behaviourally sufficiently flexible.
They exist as single-celled organisms while food is plentiful. When food is in short supply, many of the single-celled amoebae congregate and start moving as a single body, called a 'slug'. The ability of the single celled organisms to aggregate into multicellular forms are why they are also called the social amoebae.
They consume a wide variety of food, and have many vacuoles containing both food, such as diatoms, and debris such as sand. Pelomyxa are reliant on symbiotic bacteria that function similarly to the mitochondrion of aerobic creature, enabling the otherwise anaerobic species to live in more aerobic environments.