The specific question I would like to ask is:
“Are Colpodium a member of the Ciliates?”
The reason for asking is because a thread has begun at an evolution discussion forum (http://www.communityzero.com/evolution) based on the experiment below. The idea is to see if an approach can be devised to see if the mutations involved are “random” or if some other factor is involved. Looking up Colpodium in search engines only returns references to grasses!
"Acclimatisation of ciliates to changes in salinity"
M R Nice
"This experiment was carried out by M R Nice while in training at Borough Road Teachers Training College, Isleworth. Unfortunately the original notes were finally destroyed in October 1997 and the account below is written from memory, thus accounting for the lack of full experimental details.
Following a chance reference to the acclimatisation of Paramoecium to sea water an experiment was set up in 1965 to acclimatise ciliates to sea water and then to see if it were possible to reverse the process.
A hay infusion was set up and approximately a week later samples were taken to show a thriving ciliate culture consisting almost exclusively of Colpodium and occasional Loxodes. Colpodium was determined to be a suitable organism for the experiment since it has a conspicuous contractile vacuole.
A sub culture was extracted and an exact 100 ml was used as the experimental vessel while a second exact sample was used as control.
Over the next six weeks additions of saline solution were added to the experimental vessel to account for evaporation until the concentration was that of sea water, while DI water was added to the control.
Initially only one drop of a 10% solution of salt was needed to produce dramatic changes in the Colpodium specimens and the initial drop saw all the Loxodes to disappear from the experimental culture while the control culture remained consistently populated. As the experiment progressed so greater quantities of salt solution were tolerated and total volume was maintained by addition of appropriate quantities of DI water.
Individual specimens of Colpodium reacted violently, the contractile vacuole shrinking to non-existence and the animalcule flattening from its usual rotund form with some specimens imploding completely. By the next day the organisms appeared to have recovered both in individual appearance and in population density but the contractile vacuole was observed gradually to reduce in size until at the end of the first half of the experiment it was no longer to be seen.
In order to reverse the process volumes of liquid were removed daily by absorption with filter paper and DI water was added to both the experimental and control vessels to gradually reduce salinity and return to near “fresh water” conditions. Initially some organisms were seen to explode and a very large contractile vacuole developed but by the end of the second six weeks there was no obvious difference between the specimens from either vessel except that Loxodes was still only observable in the control…
Quantities of saline required were carefully calculated so that the solution in the experimental vessel was gradually raised to the concentration of sea water and in the reverse until the amount of salt left in solution was only marginally above that in the original hay infusion. Specimens of water were checked gravimetrically by precipitation of silver chloride from measured samples; and populations of Colpodium were estimated by using a microscope fitted with a graticule eyepiece."
Any help would be appreciated, I actually know M R Nice but haven’t seen him for a year or so and he might take some tracking down!
Jorolat
Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary Phase Mutations to The Baldwin Effect:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/index.html
