What are Foraminifera?
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Description: Forams as they are usually known, are abundant in all the oceans. Information on their biology, what they eat, what eats them, and their use in dating rocks and as environmental indicators.
Over hundreds of millions of years these tiny creatures have swarmed the ocean bestowing to the planet their exquisite dwellings, a smidgen of which was once fashioned into the Egyptian Pyramids Foraminifera (foraminifers or, informally, just forams) are single-celled amoeboid protists. Modern taxonomies rank the group as a phylum or subphylum. The principal characteristics of the taxon are (1) threadlike anastomosing pseudopodia bearing granules that reveal constant bidirectional streaming of the cytoplasm (granuloreticulopodia); (2) the life history characterized by an alteration of sexual and asexual generations with meiosis associated with the asexual reproduction - a feature unique in heterotrophic eukaryotes; and (3) the presence of a test (shell). The test can be composed of biogenic calcium carbonate (calcareous), cemented foreign particles such as quartz grains (agglutinated), or an organic theca composed of polysaccharides. Some foraminifera have lost the test; the existence of a naked foraminiferal progenitor has not yet been identified. The phylogenetic affinity of Foraminifera is under debate; based on molecular evidence, they do not seem to have close relatives except possibly for some unstudied naked and testate rhizopods.
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| Page title: | What are Foraminifera? |
| Keywords: | Forams, foraminifera, taxon characteristics |
| Description: | Introduction to Foraminifera. |
| IP-address: | 128.146.135.38 |