General characteristics of protozoa

 



•        There are about 50,000 known species of Phylum Protozoa.

•        They are heterophilic in nature

•        Protozoans exhibit mainly two forms of life

            Free-living (aquatic, freshwater, seawater)

            Parasitic (ectoparasites or endoparasites). Both are also commensal in habitat.

•        They are very small and microscopic, not visualize without a microscope.

•        They are different shapes and sizes.

•        They can live in abundant in different habitat like freshwater and saline water.

•        Some protozoa like Colonymphya and Trichonympha can live in the gut of termites which can able to digest cellulose. The digested from of cellulose can be utilized by the host.

•        Protozoa are primitive of all animals.

•        Protozoa have a simple body organization.

•        They lack a cell wall.

•        The body is unicellular (without tissue and internal organs).

•        They have one or more nuclei with in the cell.

•        Protozoa are monomorphic or dimorphic.

•        Body naked or bounded by a pellicle, but in some forms may be covered with shells and often provided with an internal skeleton.

•        They are solitary (existing alone/single) or colonial.

•        Body shape variables may be spherical, oval, elongated or flattened.

•        They divide by binary fission, schizogony, or budding

•        Body protoplasm is differentiated into an outer ectoplasm and inner endoplasm.

•        Locomotory organs are fingers like pseudopodia, whip-like flagella, hair-like cilia or none.

•        Food intake by cytosome.

•        Food absorption by four ways

ü  Holozoic - Heterotrophic – like animal

ü  Holophytic – Autotrophic – Like plants (use solar energy and inorganic         carbon).

ü  Saprozoic – Absorption of simple organic material and dissolved salt from      surrounding of their living.

ü  Parasitic - Lives in body surface/ inside body of the host and obtain their      nutrients.

•        Digestion occurs intracellularly which takes place inside the food vacuoles through exocytosis.

•        Respiration occurs by diffusion through the general body surface.

•        Excretion occurs through the general body surface, but in some forms through a temporary opening in the ectoplasm or through a permanent pore called cytopyge.

•        Examples - Euglena, Entamoeba Histolytica, Plasmodium, Tryponosoma, Trichomonas, Leishmania, Paramecium, Giardia, Balantidium, ect.

•        Many protozoa can cause various diseases in and humans and animals e.g. Balantidium coli (Balantidiasis), Entamoeba histolytica (Amebiasis) Plasmodium (malarial parasite), Trypanosoma (sleeping sickness), Giardia duodenalis (Giardiasis) Trichomonas (Trichomoniasis), etc.

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