Volvox Colonies and Snail ‘Cytase’

Volvox

What is Volvox? The name comes from the Latin volvere, to roll, and ox, as in atrox, fierce. Volvox is a spherical multicellular green alga, which contains many small biflagellate somatic cells and a few large, non-motile reproductive cells called gonidia, and swims with a characteristic rolling motion. Ever since van Leeuwenhoek first viewed these algal ‘fierce rollers’ with utter fascination ...

Delineating a New Heterothallic Species of Volvox (Volvocaceae, Chlorophyceae) Using New Strains of “Volvox africanus”

The volvocine algae represent an excellent model lineage in which to study evolution of female and male genders based on comparative analyses of related species. Among these species, Volvox carteri has been extensively studied as a model of an oogamous and complex organism. However, it may have unique derived features that are not present in other species of Volvox. Therefore, information regar...

Sexual Induction in Volvox Carteri

The study of the dependence of reactions on the concentration of various compounds is often of great value in determining reaction mechanisms . In chemical kinetics, it is often found that, according to van't Hoff's rule, the order of dependence of a reaction on the concentration of some compound involved in that reaction is equal to the number of molecules of the compound involved in each reac...

THE 3rd INTERNATIONAL VOLVOX CONFERENCE

Simultaneous coupling of phototaxis and electrotaxis in Volvox algae.

In nature, living creatures are affected by several stimuli simultaneously. The response of living creatures to stimuli is called taxis. In order to reveal the principles of taxis behavior in response to complex stimuli, we simultaneously applied photostimulation and electric stimulation perpendicularly to a Volvox algae solution. The probability distribution of the swimming direction showed th...