Euglena Green is a single-celled animal.found in fresh stagnated water bodies, swamps, ditches, puddles. The color of this organism is due to the content of a large number of chloroplasts in the cytoplasm. Therefore, it seems that the water “blooms” when euglena is green too diluted in it.
Its structure is a bit more complicated when compared toameba Both have a protoplasm and a nucleus. However, euglena green outside is still covered with a layer of pellicle — an elastic shell. The body has a shape resembling a spindle, blunt at one end and elongated at the other. A small flagellum emerges from the recess at the front edge. There is also a bright red "eye", which reacts to light and thus helps the cell to choose the direction of movement. Next to it is a vacuole. Due to the compacted outer shell, the shape of the animal does not change significantly; it can only slightly, within certain limits, shrink and straighten. Such a structure euglena green causes the method of movement. Making a flagella rotational movements, this microscopic creature swims pretty quickly. There are species that make wave-like fluctuations in the body and thus float. Why this happens is not yet clear. Biologists have two suggestions on this. On the one hand, there may be a connection between the Euglena organelles and protein threads that are under the pellicle and can be reduced. On the other hand, this type of movement can be caused by mucus secreted by the cell.
Euglena green can eat both as an animal andlike a plant. The way she chooses depends on the lighting. Its protoplasm contains more than twenty oval bodies - chromatophore. They, as already mentioned, and paint the cell in green. During the day, using chlorophyll contained in chromatophores, euglena green is able to participate in photosynthesis, assimilating the carbon it needs, just like plants, from carbon dioxide. At the same time in its body from the inorganic substances a nutrient is formed, resembling starch and deposited in the form of grains in the cytoplasm. At night, this cage can eat just like an animal. It is able, with the help of vacuoles, to immediately process organic substances, which in the reservoirs are plenty in an already dissolved form. So does the amoeba. And the more neglected the reservoir, the more of these substances. If euglena green is in the dark for a long time, the chlorophyll from the chromatophore disappears. Accordingly, the color of the cell disappears, it is completely discolored.
There are species that are generally not typical.photosynthesis, they can only eat like animals. They even develop a kind of oral apparatus for ingesting microscopic food particles.
The ability of this organism to choose the method of feeding once again indicates to scientists that animals and plants have the same origin.
Reproduced euglena green longitudinal divisionthe cell itself: following the protoplasm it splits into two halves and the nucleus. Each individual species grows new flagellum. Under favorable conditions, euglena green divorces so much that water also becomes the corresponding color. There are some types of these single-celled organisms that, while evolving, have remarkably adapted themselves to live even in the cold. As a result of this adaptation, at the time of their mass reproduction, snow is colored not only in green, but also in red, yellow and even blue.
There are also eugleins whose cells are saturated.carotene. They paint ponds in red or brown. When rivers, puddles, swamps, etc., dry up or freeze, euglena green loses flagellum, is rounded, covered with a thick shell - for a while it transforms into a cyst. In this form, it can wait for favorable conditions in the same place or be transported with dust.
